Insights 

Our Sales organization reported a recurring issue: customers were receiving incorrect products. This directly impacted customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, and brand reliability.

Given the scale of the distribution center of the customer (managing over 24,000 unique SKUs) even small process deviations had significant downstream consequences. 

The Approach

We initiated a structured root cause analysis to identify and eliminate the underlying drivers of the problem.

The analysis revealed two primary failure points within the supply chain process:

1. Return (RMA) Handling Process
Incorrect articles were occasionally created in the system during return processing.
The inbound returns team, responsible for quality control, did not always detect discrepancies between the physical item and the system registration.
As a result, incorrect products were returned to inventory.

2. Picking Process Verification
During picking, operators scanned the location barcode rather than the product barcode.
This process relied on location validation instead of SKU validation.
The original reason for this approach was that more than 10% of the articles lacked a barcode on the Base Unit of Measure (BUOM), limiting product-level scanning capability.

These combined issues created systemic risk in inventory accuracy and order fulfillment quality.

Implementation and Results

We addressed the problem through two targeted improvement projects.

1. Return Process Optimization

We introduced an integrated weight control system at return reception:

• Operators were equipped with tools to validate both:
  The weight of the returned item
  The quantity of items received

• The system displayed a product image on-screen during quality control to support visual verification.

• Weight validation added an objective control layer, reducing reliance on manual interpretation.

This created a multi-layered validation mechanism: system data + weight verification + visual confirmation.

2. Product Barcode Scanning in Picking

We redesigned the picking validation process:

• Implemented scanning of the article barcode instead of only the location barcode.

• Addressed the BUOM barcode gap to enable product-level scanning.

• Shifted from location-based validation to SKU-level confirmation.

This significantly strengthened process control and reduced the probability of incorrect order fulfillment.

The Impact

• Significant improvement in picking accuracy

• Higher inventory integrity

• Improved quality in return reception

• Decrease the return quality control processing time with 50%

Beyond operational improvements, the project strengthened customer reliability, reduced rework, and enhanced overall supply chain robustness.