A Perfect Play for Hasbro

Each year, the Matson Logistics Savannah Warehouse team conducts an intensive physical inventory (PI) audit for its anchor customer, Hasbro Toys and Games. It’s an “all-hands on floor” exercise, with a strategy more complex than the game Twister, and includes more than 40 team members across two buildings hand-counting every carton of Hasbro product.

While time-consuming, the exhaustive exercise is necessary to ensure the inventory quantities match the numbers in both Matson Logistics’ and Hasbro’s computer systems.

Hasbro was the first customer in Savannah when the facility opened in 2008. It remains its largest, occupying more than 750,000 square feet for its merchandise, including board games such as Monopoly and Scrabble, and licensed toys and collectibles for Marvel Studios, Disney, and Star Wars.

Matson Logistics Warehousing provides Hasbro with a complete distribution and fulfillment solution, including value-added services such as returns processing/quality assessment, repackaging, and price stickering.

“Historically, the PI takes five to six days to complete,” said Christine Brazell, inventory manager in Savannah. “This year, we completed it in three days, with the Hasbro management team flying in on the last day to audit our performance.”

The task was daunting, with more than two million cases to be hand-counted, recorded into the system, and verified. The inventory and operations teams tackled the count and completed it ahead of the deadline.

The result? There was a 0% systematic discrepancy in the case count across two million cases and just a $800 monetary discrepancy, easily surpassing Hasbro’s targets.

According to a Hasbro logistics executive, “In the 14 years of conducting physical inventory audits, this is the best one I have seen. Thank you for your outstanding efforts.”

“With these results and the ongoing cycle counts, wall to wall and inventory practices put in place, Hasbro confirmed that we can move our physical inventories to every two years instead of performing them annually,” according to Brazell.

The team members who planned and executed the PI included but not limited to: Arnette Benda, Christine Brazell, Jeanette Lee, Christina Watson, Valerie Lewis, Wanda Dunn, Joyce Furnari, Genesis Watson, and Virginia Velez.

Tara Hopkins, general manager for warehousing East Coast, commended the teams, “The Inventory and Operations teams went above and beyond to ensure the success of this Hasbro PI! I am beyond proud of all the team members from all buildings who stepped up to help and ensure the success of this VIP customer.”