We got an early lesson in the traps of units of measure. Units of measure are the dimensional characteristics of an item – length, width, height, weight, Pallet/Case/Inner Pack/Each, conversion qty (how many Eaches per unit), etc. I don’t remember how M.O.M. handled Units of Measure – I know that we didn’t handle them all that well. As I’ve mentioned, we were picking off of paper, and it’s hard even to read line-item quantity accurately in the hurly-burly. So, we had set up the formatting on our Crystal Reports packing slip to highlight a line where qty > 1 on the pack-slip. With the hopes that it would demand attention from the packer.

One of our early clients had an important presentation with a very large retailer, and the client put in a large order for cases of all of their products to ship overnight to the attention of our client’s CFO at his hotel somewhere in the midwest. Unfortunately, instead of a case per product, we sent an each per product – a handful of small bottles. This was a grave error.

I honestly don’t remember how we messed this up. I think maybe we were clever and had set up some formatting in the report that converted an Each quantity to a Case quantity on the packing slip – So I suspect the slip said 1 CASE, with a big qty 1. I do remember the pain of the error. 

It would be another three or four years before we had Manhattan Associates warehouse management in the mix, and a few more years yet before we more fully availed ourselves of its controls around units of measure.

I smile when I get a package from Amazon – a case that sells as an each – with a white label stating “THIS IS A UNIT – DO NOT BREAK OPEN.” It’s a tricky problem with lots of solutions. And solutions have implications. How do I keep track of inventory? Can an item’s state flow between pallets, cases, inner-packs, and eaches and back again? How do the pickers, who have been on the job 2 hours, validate that they have the correct item and unit of measure and correct quantity of said unit of measure? There’s lots to say about units of measure. But we learned back in 2002 that they exist.