Field note ·
Slotting after a retailer drops forty lines and adds twelve
Empty pick faces look like spare capacity until the new twelve need more cube than the forty ever did. Range change is a slotting event, not just a purchase-order event.
Retailers drop lines in a file and add others in the same week. Purchase orders follow. Slotting often waits until the new cases are already on the dock, at which point they go into whatever pick face is empty. Empty is not the same as correctly sized.
Forty deleted lines can free forty locations that are too shallow for twelve new lines with larger cubes. If you count locations instead of cube, you will announce spare capacity and then spend a weekend restacking. We ask for the range file early — dropped SKUs, new SKUs, and case dimensions — and treat the change as a slotting event with a freeze on those aisles while faces are rebuilt.
Promotional lines that will live for six weeks should not steal golden-zone beams from year-round A-lines unless the promotion is the actual business that week. That sounds obvious until a buyer’s pallet is sitting in receiving and the only free face is the one you need in January. A seasonal programme is partly a political document: it names who is allowed to occupy the easy beams, and for how long.
After a range change, replenishment tickets must be rebuilt for the new homes. Leaving old tickets alive is how last year’s bottles reappear in this year’s biscuit face. That is not a ghost. It is an unretired location.