I'm curious about stores that sort their inventory by category or part number: What do you do when you get a large influx of a particular part or large amounts of parts from a single category? Do you shift your physical inventory down to make room to keep everything in your pre-defined order? If so, that sounds like a lot of unnecessary work to me!
From day one (in 2008) my inventory was completely decentralized and indexed by location only. Our only organization was keeping each container limited to one color and attempting to separate any similar parts to prevent confusion when picking. The one down-side to this method was when parts went missing and were not in their proper container, there was no particular place to look for that '2x4 brick' except by estimating the lot's volume and browsing through all appropriately sized containers looking for it.
I developed a new location system now that I've switched to all sets. Everything's indexed still, but I almost never use the location any more because there's few enough lots that I just remember where the set is. It certainly didn't work like that when I had half a million parts!
I sort by category but all the drawers are labeled with a letter-number combination so that I can sort my pick list by remarks and it comes up I order for easy pulling. I also have room at the tops of the sterilite drawer stacks to put some tubs so if one lot will not fit in the drawer I put it in a tub above the drawer. Now keep in mind I am the only person that has to understand my system and I think it is very well organized. I had 2 300+lot orders last weekend that took me just over an hour to pull. I was pretty happy about that. James
I currently store my parts by lot in small or larger containers depending on the part size and/or amount. Cabinets are sorted by category types ... my own, only half related to the BO catalog. So if I find it's a modified plate it goes to a certain cabinet. Could be that on the order it's listed as a modified tile but I recognize the part and know where to look for. As Badlove has said, this works perfectly for a one-man business. Drawback of this: I indeed need to shift cabinets sometimes when more parts arrive or when the drawers get full. Picking time is fast enough (to my standards).
I'm curious about stores that sort their inventory by category or part number: What do you do when you get a large influx of a particular part or large amounts of parts from a single category? Do you shift your physical inventory down to make room to keep everything in your pre-defined order? If so, that sounds like a lot of unnecessary work to me!
I work with clear shoeboxes, many of my own categories, like everything on the tiny side of things goes in the same bin and they don't get lost in the middle of bigger things elsewhere.
Easy to just add another bin and shift for more lots. Technic bricks broke into 1-6 and 6-12, then when the first one got too crowded for fast picking it went to three -- small with hole, 4-6 and with Axlehole. 6-12 had the odd ones too and one day they needed their own.
I just keep a working amount in the go to box at hand and restock it from overflow bins if necessary. If someone buys all 500 of something it is worth the time to go to the semi sorted overflow bins.
@rjmorton Holy cow, you just blew my mind. I feel like a little kid with a tub of bricks now, LOL. What square footage is your storage area? Thanks so much for sharing your info and photos, you may have just inspired us to store that way (my husband may kill you though, LOL). Do you make house calls?
@plastic_paradise (Love the name) Thanks also for the visuals/links to products.
We have been using the plastic disposable sandwich keepers with the plano shelves and then the dollar store bins you mentioned as well as of course the large bins.
So in theory I would now number my parts consecutively as they are added to inventory. When you part a set do you go down the list and give new numbers to new items or ? I am trying to wrap my mind around all these new ideas
@BrocksBricks We mostly use small stacking bins and leave a little room at the top of each stack to add more as needed. Occasionally we do need to do a massive shift which is never fun.
@rjmorton Holy cow, you just blew my mind. I feel like a little kid with a tub of bricks now, LOL. What square footage is your storage area? Thanks so much for sharing your info and photos, you may have just inspired us to store that way (my husband may kill you though, LOL). Do you make house calls?
Tracy
Heh, sorry, no we're not setup for personal visits! The whole operation started with me buying, parting out and selling 5x 3033 blue tubs in 2000 and kind of snowballed from there over the years.
To answer your questions, We're lucky in that 2 weeks we're moving to a new house that has a separate 1000sq ft building just for the LEGO - should be enough room for the foreseeable future hopefully. As for putting things away when I part sets, in my Bricklink days, I wrote a custom inventory manager application (I'm a software developer in my work life) and when we parted out sets, it would automatically inform us which items we already had, tell us which drawers to put away in and increment the qty for the items. For the items that we didn't already have, it would allocate an empty drawer to the lots. When I move to Brickowl in a few weeks, I'm probably going to write something similar - I'm enthused by the fact that Brickowl already has the beginnings of a real API, so it should be easy once Admin gets the catalog API done. Will probably open the software up to other sellers as well if they find it useful. Thanks for your comments. Richard.
@admin I have just searched for a minifigure on Google and it is still coming up with BL id's against Brick Owl links, not sure how these would be eliminated as they have been purged, didn't want it to cause any trouble so thought I better mention it.
I do not know how the search engines pull their information, crawlers and whatever are beyond me, might just be an outdated crawler/thingy/whatever.
OK Lawrence you have a fine sense of humor (I already saw that) but I have yet to see ANY website put a remark like that in robots.txt!!! LoL
The crawlers (robots) have their own process and it can take hours/days or weeks - algorithms unknown, there are lots of dissallow commands which will likely slow them down - BUT hey at least they ARE allowed (the other place blocks them)
I feel really sorry for Dan's legacy and Dan's family. This is definately not how he saw the BL database. Dan always placed the community first.
The BL database and it's naming/numbering are made up by members and taken from other sites (e.g. Peeron) and in my opinion it's bad karma to go legal with it.
@admin don't be discouraged by this. I think it will strengthen the community here.
I feel really sorry for Dan's legacy and Dan's family. This is definately not how he saw the BL database. Dan always placed the community first.
The BL database and it's naming/numbering are made up by members and taken from other sites (e.g. Peeron) and in my opinion it's bad karma to go legal with it.
@admin don't be discouraged by this. I think it will strengthen the community here.
@admin I have just searched for a minifigure on Google and it is still coming up with BL id's against Brick Owl links, not sure how these would be eliminated as they have been purged, didn't want it to cause any trouble so thought I better mention it.
I do not know how the search engines pull their information, crawlers and whatever are beyond me, might just be an outdated crawler/thingy/whatever.
Crawlers cache information to speed up search results. It will update when the search engine reindexes the site information. Not sure how often that happens.
Disappointed to see the legal finger wagging going on. I really don't think BL has much standing with regard to their naming conventions. most of it was taken from other databases originally or provided by people with the understanding that it would remain free to use. Not to mention that they have not aggressively or in any other way, gone after other sites and software that use their naming conventions, like eBay, Peeron, Brickset, Brickstore, or TLG. It is really really foolish to not use standard naming conventions. Almost every other industry comes up with standards for their part names, designs, and processes in order to prevent confusion amongst consumers, and polarizing competition. Imagine if there were 20 different types of USB ports out there, all with different names...
I'm new to this world and think Brick Owl is great. There are items I want on the other site that aren't here yet but I'm willing to wait for sellers to migrate over here. The other site is really annoying and it isn't customer friendly. The cease and desist was pretty low. Thy are just scared cos this is a quality product and there's isn't.
i only started using BL as i thought that it was the only so-called decent source for parts that i needed to build my models,it eventually turned into a farce due to the length of time taken for putting in an order and then finding out that it was extortionate, in more ways than one. some how i came across BO,what a breath of fresh air,the system seems to run itself,members are always courteous,stock levels are good and they try as hard as possible to keep postage low, all of this is for the benefit of the customer.if it ever gets to a case being taken to court ,i will gladly lend my full support to BO,as they are doing a damned fine job for the buyers.what happened to free trade brick owl you will always have my vote,due to the fact that you have respect for your customers and that respect is reciprocated by the customers, of which you now have a growing number ,all due to doing a fantastic job. WELL DONE bob parkey UK
hmm reading this e-mail, I'm even more determined to do more business on this website ! Your website is fantastic, it has so much features and a sleak design ! Bricklink missing all those features and design Just as rufus259 is telling !
Hello this is an interesting quedtion i have debeloped my system over the years but still its a work in progress.
I have made rows with containers which are made based on the categories .
The containers can be seperated based in 1 to 5 sperated compartiment to store items with there unique lego id. Thumbrule here, if it does not fit in existing compartimeny make a new container and label the emty spot as free for new parts.
Beside this we have a drawer cabinet in which we store the very small and low quantitu items each drawer based on category and unique part number
Colors are put in zipbags in the same compartiment. Reason : i only have a very little place to store everything.
Comments
From day one (in 2008) my inventory was completely decentralized and indexed by location only. Our only organization was keeping each container limited to one color and attempting to separate any similar parts to prevent confusion when picking. The one down-side to this method was when parts went missing and were not in their proper container, there was no particular place to look for that '2x4 brick' except by estimating the lot's volume and browsing through all appropriately sized containers looking for it.
I developed a new location system now that I've switched to all sets. Everything's indexed still, but I almost never use the location any more because there's few enough lots that I just remember where the set is. It certainly didn't work like that when I had half a million parts!
James
James
http://www.brothers-brick.com/2013/09/27/bricklink-updates-tos-causes-furor-news/
http://www.newelementary.com/2013/09/bricks-inc.html
It seems the BL-change-of-ToS pebble is making very, very big waves in the AFOL pond ...
Easy to just add another bin and shift for more lots. Technic bricks broke into 1-6 and 6-12, then when the first one got too crowded for fast picking it went to three -- small with hole, 4-6 and with Axlehole. 6-12 had the odd ones too and one day they needed their own.
I just keep a working amount in the go to box at hand and restock it from overflow bins if necessary. If someone buys all 500 of something it is worth the time to go to the semi sorted overflow bins.
@plastic_paradise (Love the name) Thanks also for the visuals/links to products.
We have been using the plastic disposable sandwich keepers with the plano shelves and then the dollar store bins you mentioned as well as of course the large bins.
So in theory I would now number my parts consecutively as they are added to inventory. When you part a set do you go down the list and give new numbers to new items or ? I am trying to wrap my mind around all these new ideas
Tracy
@BrocksBricks We mostly use small stacking bins and leave a little room at the top of each stack to add more as needed. Occasionally we do need to do a massive shift which is never fun.
To answer your questions, We're lucky in that 2 weeks we're moving to a new house that has a separate 1000sq ft building just for the LEGO - should be enough room for the foreseeable future hopefully.
As for putting things away when I part sets, in my Bricklink days, I wrote a custom inventory manager application (I'm a software developer in my work life) and when we parted out sets, it would automatically inform us which items we already had, tell us which drawers to put away in and increment the qty for the items. For the items that we didn't already have, it would allocate an empty drawer to the lots. When I move to Brickowl in a few weeks, I'm probably going to write something similar - I'm enthused by the fact that Brickowl already has the beginnings of a real API, so it should be easy once Admin gets the catalog API done. Will probably open the software up to other sellers as well if they find it useful.
Thanks for your comments.
Richard.
I do not know how the search engines pull their information, crawlers and whatever are beyond me, might just be an outdated crawler/thingy/whatever.
The crawlers (robots) have their own process and it can take hours/days or weeks - algorithms unknown, there are lots of dissallow commands which will likely slow them down - BUT hey at least they ARE allowed (the other place blocks them)
Graham
The BL database and it's naming/numbering are made up by members and taken from other sites (e.g. Peeron) and in my opinion it's bad karma to go legal with it.
@admin don't be discouraged by this. I think it will strengthen the community here.
Enoch
some how i came across BO,what a breath of fresh air,the system seems to run itself,members are always courteous,stock levels are good and they try as hard as possible to keep postage low, all of this is for the benefit of the customer.if it ever gets to a case being taken to court ,i will gladly lend my full support to BO,as they are doing a damned fine job for the buyers.what happened to free trade brick owl you will always have my vote,due to the fact that you have respect for your customers and that respect is reciprocated by the customers, of which you now have a growing number ,all due to doing a fantastic job. WELL DONE
bob parkey UK
Your website is fantastic, it has so much features and a sleak design ! Bricklink missing all those features and design
I have made rows with containers which are made based on the categories .
The containers can be seperated based in 1 to 5 sperated compartiment to store items with there unique lego id. Thumbrule here, if it does not fit in existing compartimeny make a new container and label the emty spot as free for new parts.
Beside this we have a drawer cabinet in which we store the very small and low quantitu items each drawer based on category and unique part number
Colors are put in zipbags in the same compartiment. Reason : i only have a very little place to store everything.
Kind regards
Peter