Most businesses manage tissue stock the same way: someone notices the shelf or the store is nearly empty, and an order goes in urgently. It works, in the sense that nobody has died of it. It is also the most expensive way to buy, and it guarantees that sooner or later you will run out at the worst possible moment.
The fix is not a system. It is one number, worked out once, and reviewed occasionally.
Running out costs more than holding
Worth being clear about, because the instinct is always to hold less.
For a retailer, an empty shelf is a lost sale, and often a lost customer, because they bought it somewhere else and discovered that shop was fine. For a hotel or an office, an empty dispenser is a complaint and an emergency purchase at whatever price is available. For a distributor, a stockout is a customer learning that your competitor also delivers.
Tissue does not spoil, it is not seasonal in any complicated way, and it does not become obsolete. There are categories where lean stock is clever. This is not one of them.
Work out what you actually use
Not what you think you use. Nobody knows their consumption until they measure it, and almost everybody guesses low.
Take a period long enough to be real, ideally a month, and count what left the store. Do not use what you ordered, because ordering is lumpy and will mislead you. Divide by the days and you have a daily rate. That is the foundation, and it takes one afternoon.
If you want a starting estimate before you have measured anything, our Order Planner gives an indicative monthly figure by business type. Use it as a first guess, then replace it with your real number as soon as you have one.
The reorder point
This is the whole article in one line.
Reorder point equals what you use during the supplier's lead time, plus a buffer for the days it goes wrong.
If you use 10 cartons a day and your supplier takes 5 days, you consume 50 cartons while waiting. Order at 50 and you arrive at zero exactly as the truck does, assuming nothing at all goes wrong. Something will. So add a buffer.
How big a buffer depends on one thing: how reliable your supplier actually is, not how reliable they say they are. A supplier who has never been late in two years needs a small buffer. One who is late every third order needs a large one, and you are financing their unreliability out of your working capital. That is worth noticing, because it is a real cost that never appears on an invoice.
Write the number on the shelf, on the rack, on a label. When the stock reaches the line, you order. No debate, no waiting for someone to notice.
The peaks you can see coming
Some of your demand is predictable, so predict it.
- December. Retail and hospitality both climb, and everyone in the chain is ordering at once. This is the worst month to discover your reorder point was optimistic.
- School terms. If you supply or run an institution, your demand starts and stops on a published calendar.
- Events and conferences. Someone in the building knows about these weeks ahead. Ask them.
- Rainy season logistics. Not demand, but delivery. If the road gets harder, your effective lead time is longer, so your reorder point should move.
Do not solve it by buying a year of stock
The overcorrection is as bad as the problem.
Tissue is bulky. Holding a year of it ties up cash and fills space you are paying rent on, and in our climate it gives damp and pests time to find it. The goal is not maximum stock. It is never being surprised.
Four habits
- Measure once, properly. One month of real consumption beats a year of estimating.
- Write the reorder point where the stock is. A number in a spreadsheet nobody opens is not a control.
- Give it an owner. When checking stock is everyone's job it is nobody's job.
- Track your supplier's lead time. If it is drifting, your reorder point is already wrong.
None of this is sophisticated. It is one number and one habit, and it is the difference between planned buying and panic buying. If you want help setting the level for your sites, talk to our team. We would rather you ordered predictably than urgently.