Batch Management in Retail Stores

Grocery Retailers in India are finding it challenging in handling batch numbers for the SKU's they carry in their stores. As the volume of business increases, the count of stores and the count of SKUs, the retailer handles are also increasing tremendously. Retailers are finding it hard to control the shelf life of a SKU kept on the shelf. Since the FIFO process in the store is quiet manual, the task of following the queuing procedure for batch numbers has left to the mercy of the store personnel. Being spent a quality amount of my tenure in Retail, I really get furious when I find an expiry stock still lying on the shelf.

During my last store visit, i picked up a Maggi Masala Noodles and proceeded towards billing. Being a retailer myself, I have turned the pack to look into the manufacturing date of the product( Old habits die-hard!!!). I was shocked to see that the product i am carrying is already expired 15 days back.Being such a fast moving product, I would have never expected Maggi Noodles to be expired and still lying on the shelf. Having shopped in such a store, I would never want to revisit that store in my life time.