As of version 4.224, c9 now includes more sophisticated restocking analysis tools to help you manage your stock levels and avoid overstocking and understocking. The new set of tools provides:

• A sophisticated statistical model that makes restocking recommendations and responds to: sale history for last 18 months. list price of the item, and margin gain for stock ordering vs overnight ordering.
• Statistical model is able to recognise and cope with seasonal items (identifying high and low seasons), long term gradual trends and unusually high once off orders.
• Ability to tune the model, selecting either aggressive, modest or conservative restocking goals depending on how much stock you wish to maintain.
• Ability to tune the model on a per franchise basis. i.e. aggressively stock your principal franchise, and maintain more modest stocking levels for secondary franchises and accessory suppliers
• A 'flight simulator' that allows you to check how the model settings would perform based on last 6 months of business; showing you resulting overstocking (dead stock) and understocking (overnight ordering) if the model was used for all stock re-ordering. Allowing you to tune towards the mix that is suitable for your inventory.
• Ability to configure per-part hints and exceptions. i.e. 'never stock this part', or 'increasing reordering by 100% for this part'. i.e. sale history and list price are sometimes insufficient for decision making. i.e. things like oil filters you never want to run out of so it is appropriate to aggressively overstock these.
• Makes recommendations for items you do not currently stock but should and is able to resolve super-cession chains
• A redesigned analysis UI that instead of making you trawl through your entire stock, allows you to focus on items that may be potentially understocked or overstocked, so instead of exhaustively checking thousands of items, you only check the top 50 items.
• The ability to reorder based on preset maxqty levels or using the calculated numbers generated by restocking analysis

Important note: Restocking analysis of a part requires that the part has moved in at least 4 separate  restocking periods in the past 18 months.   A restocking period is amount of time on average between stock orders. If you've never placed a stock order for a brand new franchise for example, system assumes 30 days.  So say your restocking period is 2 weeks, then for a brand new item that you order for customers, c9 will not recommend you stock it for 8 weeks at absolute minimum.

Restocking Analysis Basics

Goto spare parts, utilities.  There is an option called Stocking Analysis.  Select it. Then select a franchise to analyze.

You will then be presented with the restocking analysis configuration window.

a) Restocking goal. Select goal that best describes how you want to manage this stock
b) Select continue to continue with analysis
c) Tabs in this window allow you to fine tune settings that control the statistical model.  Explores these yourself. In the window is provided description of what each setting means and what it influences
d) simulator. See later in this post for details on how to use the simulator

On selecting Continue, the system will then load and process the data. After a few moments you will be presented with an analysis window.

Along the top of the window are tabs that when selected change the order of the parts in the list.  This is used so you can focus on a specific concern, i.e. analysing parts that are potentially overstocked or understocked

The options are:

• Overstocked by quantity.   Your current max is much higher than the statistically calculated max.  You may be overstocking this item
• Understocked by quantity.   Your current max is much lower than the statistically calculated max.  You may be understocking this item
• Overstocked by value.   Similar to overstocked by quantity but the cost of the item is factored in too.  You may have alot of money tied up stocking something at an unnecessary level.  Reducing stocking will improve cash flow.
• Understocked by value. Similar to understock by quantity by cost of the item is factored in too.  You may be missing out on stock order margin gain because you sometimes might have to order these items overnight.
• Not stocked.  Things that are not stocked but you sell enough of it might be worth stocking
• High value (calculated).  Items that are expensive to shelve, if you use statistical model figures for restocking.  Analysing this can help improve cash flow by focusing on items that cost alot to shelve and making sure stock levels are spot on.
• High value (current). Similar to calculated except it uses current max qty to calculate.
• Parts with rules/exceptions. Items in stock where you have setup a manual rule i.e. 'do not stock', 'increase by 100%' etc.  Used to review exceptions and make sure they are still accurate.  Adding exceptions is described below.

In the list are the parts themselves.

In the group stocked item, it shows current minqty and maxqty.  If you click 'Apply' without changing these, then the recommended max qty is automatically applied. If you change min/max manually and click 'apply' your manual overrides are saved onto the stock item, not the recommended setting.

Interpreting Restocking Images

There is alot of colour and activity in the restocking images that are presented.

• The thick blue line represents sales over the past 18 months.  Left hand side is 18 months ago. Right hand side is today. Sales are grouped based on 'average time between restocking' which is worked out by looking at how many stock orders are raised in the last 6 months. The frequency is also displayed on the graph. At the top is the part number. In brackets is the restocking frequency (in above it is 7.3 days). If there is no restocking history c9 assumes 30 days
• The gray background represents last 6 months.
• The dark black line with green on top and red on bottom represents the statistical trend for the data.The thickness of the green/red bar represent the variability from re-order to re-order. The wider the bar the more variation from order period to order period for sale of this item.
• MaxQty = The current stocking maxqty.  For unstocked items MaxQty is shown as being 0
• CalcQty = The raw statistical/calculated restocking recommendation
• AdjQty = For items where a rule/exception is added (see below), the AdjQty is the adjusted calculated quantity, with the rule/exception applied.
• The part number is displayed above.
• The line entry, w=3.50, lw=0.50 ....   are statistical metrics that are used to determine calculation for CalcQty.  These are mainly for barney only.  For the curious:
  • w = statistical weighting.  +ve means stock aggrestively. -ve = stock conservatively
  • lw = weighting to apply based on list price.
  • cn = weighting to apply based on continuity of data. (sales are regular or sporadic)
  • m = weighting to apply based on average sales per period
  • mw = weighting to apply based on stock margin gain over overnight buy discount

Adding Exceptions

Consider an oil filter.

You never want to run out of these. Now c9 recommends 19 which for the last 6 months should be able to provide for all sales without having to restock.  But we want to be absolutely sure so we want to carry double what c9 recommends.

To do this, click on Manual Rule Exception. You will be presented with a window which gives you many options for setting up an exception. We select the option 'Increase stocking recommendation by %' and we key in 100%. We see this.

Now clicking on OK, in the main menu it is now obvious to us that the item in question has a rule/exception applied to it.

Restocking Simulator

If you go to restocking analysis at the configuration page and click on Simulator. The system will load last 2 years of data and then run a simulation of sales for past 6 months. The simlulator then gives you the following screen:

The simulator will give you information such as resulting volume of dead stock, profit missed by failing to sell out of stock vs having to do an overnight order'; fill rates etc.

The simulator will allow you to analyse individual parts allowing you to check poor performers based on overstocking/understocking similar to analysis described above permitting you to go back to config and change settings to tune the broad model settings or add individual rule/exceptions on strategic parts.

The image generated one one additional piece of information.  In the grey area representing last 6 months, (i.e. the period of simulation), the image will also contain a darker grey area. This represents simulated restocking events which uses actual dates in past 6 months when stock orders where generated to simulate restocking.

Important note: The simulator figures are a simulation only and some behaviours are not emulated with complete accuracy (i.e. changes in average restocking frequency in the 6 month period or changes in buy prices) or not emulated at all (i.e. backorder delays or customers not proceeding with a sale because you cannot supply parts immediately). As such the figures are approximate only.

Generate Stock Order

Now when you generate a stock order you have option to use Max Qty or use statistical calculation as per above sections.

Disadvantage of statistical calculation is diminished control over stock levels. If you ever use this option is is doubly important that you inspect the resulting stock order before sending it to the supplier.

The advantages are:

• Diminished effort. No need to manage max qty, let C9 do it for you
• Statistical restocking will cope with seasonal stock and gradual down/up trends in stocking