Sales, purchasing and warehouse: a weekly meeting format

The sales department announces a promotion in a Telegram channel, purchasing orders the goods, and the warehouse learns of it last, when the truck is already at the gate or when a customer's order cannot be filled. The promotion has started and the goods are not there. A large delivery has arrived and there is no room. The problem is not the people: each department lives by its own plan, with no rhythm tying them together. The cheapest remedy is a weekly meeting: 30 minutes, three departments, one table.

Why the three departments must sit together

Sales knows what and how much will sell, purchasing knows what will arrive and when, and the warehouse knows what it has space, people and time for. When each department relies only on what it knows, decisions come out half-formed. Looked at together, demand, deliveries and capacity are matched to each other. There is another benefit: the departments begin to see each other's problems. Purchasing hears clearly, for the first time, what a delayed delivery causes in the warehouse, and sales hears who answers to the customer for an item that has run out. The meeting is held not to discuss last week but to make decisions for the next two or three weeks.

A 30-minute agenda

1. Last week (5 minutes): three figures, namely the share of orders shipped complete and on time, the number of items that ran out, and the deliveries that arrived and did not arrive.
2. From sales (8 minutes): promotions in the next 2 to 3 weeks, large orders, new customers, the season.
3. From purchasing (8 minutes): deliveries on the way, delays, new orders, price changes.
4. From the warehouse (5 minutes): free space, staff (leave, illness), obstacles.
5. Decisions (4 minutes): an owner and a deadline are recorded for each decision.

The order matters: the warehouse speaks last, because after hearing the requests of sales and purchasing it gives a clear answer, "we can do this" or "we cannot do that".

Gather the three figures of the first item every week in one table of the same form: the person responsible is the warehouse manager, and the table is ready by 9 a.m. on Monday. Without figures the meeting turns into guesswork.

An example: a promotion and space

An example, with illustrative figures. Sales wants to run a promotion on one product within two weeks and expects demand to be three times normal. Purchasing has ordered 6,000 units, while the warehouse normally allocates room for 2,000 units of this product. At the meeting the warehouse says: free space is enough for only 2,500 more. Three ways out then appear: split the delivery into two batches, shorten the promotion, or temporarily reduce the space given to another product. Without the meeting this would come out when the truck is standing at the gate, and the decision would be hurried and costly. At the end of the meeting the decision is written down: the delivery is split in two, the second batch arrives in the second week of the promotion, the owner is the purchasing manager, the deadline is this Friday.

Rules for the meeting

• the same time and place every week (for example Monday morning), no longer than 30 minutes;
• do not read out reports: the figures are circulated in advance on one page, and only decisions are taken at the meeting;
• each department sends someone able to make decisions, not an assistant;
• the minutes are one page: decision, owner, deadline. The next meeting starts from them.

If the warehouse is out of town, meet by video, but let the warehouse manager join from the workplace, not an office, so that they can show real conditions.

Typical mistakes

The first mistake is turning the meeting into complaints, the warehouse about purchasing, sales about the warehouse. After such a meeting someone stops attending. The second is not inviting the warehouse manager or telling them at the last moment. The third is not checking next week whether decisions were carried out; trust in the meeting then fades fast. The fourth is holding the meeting only when a problem has arisen: the strength of a rhythm is that it works before the problem. Going through last week's decisions at the start of the meeting makes people take them seriously.

Conclusion

If sales, purchasing and the warehouse do not look at one table, each ends up defending its own corner. The OmborExpert specialists help set a rhythm between the three departments, prepare the needed indicators and establish a decision-making routine.