LCY is the identifier of the product position,used in trade with the aim of creating and tracking statistics of goods or services sold. This abbreviation appeared in the Russian language as a reading of the English denotation SKU - stock keeping unit, in translation - "warehouse unit".
The LCY in trade initially designatedThe real unit of production - both sold and still stored in the warehouse. In the future, with the development of the service sector and the expansion of sales of intangible goods, for example, licenses for the use of programs or online training courses, the LCY also began to apply to any realized positions.
In modern interpretation this termis also deciphered as an article - a combination of numbers and symbols, from which it is possible to obtain certain information about the characteristics of the product. Any sold thing or service gets an individual LCY - this is the code that distinguishes it from all the others. This designation facilitates the calculation of distribution.
The slightest difference in the characteristics of two similaramong themselves the commodity units entails the assignment of different identifiers to them. For example, 1% kefir in a 0.5 liter plastic bottle and 2.5% in the same container will be given different SKUs to track their movement in the warehouse and laying on the store shelves.
The identifier can include both digits,under which the product is encrypted, as well as symbols denoting the color, size and other versions of the product. SKY clothing, household appliances, furniture, office supplies are often formed using a combination of numbers and letters (for example, 123-SYN). In the relevant stores it is convenient to track the sales statistics taking into account the colors, sizes and other related characteristics.
Each accounting unit participates in the managementstocks in the enterprise. The organization and the order of deliveries occur taking into account the traffic for each LCY. The main volume of sales is carried out at the expense of only 20% of the total number of positions, but, as the practice of trade has shown, it makes no sense to abandon all the remaining 80%. Buyers in the mass prefer to choose future acquisitions where the greatest quantity of LCY is represented, and not where only the most popular commodity is concentrated. For a successful trade, you need to offer the population more quality products than required by average demand.
Simultaneously with the increase in the spectrum of the proposedgoods or services need to monitor the glut of the market. If too much excess of the required quantity of products by a particular company, the least popular varieties become noticeable, and the range has to be reduced due to unjustified production and storage costs.
Forming the assortment policy, the enterprise is obliged to take into account the peculiarities of the ways and channels of sale of each group of goods. According to the degree of demand and the volume of the share in the sales of the product, LCY are divided into:
Classification of identifiers by groups occurs using ABC or XYZ analysis.
Retail trade in large volumes with a widethe assortment of goods can not do without taking into account the LCY. This is necessary because in the presence of hundreds and thousands of warehouse units, the control over the receipt and consumption of products passes from the accounting to the logistics plane. For each SKU the goods are required to keep a count of the balances. Qualitative control over unsold volume of production and calculation of the quantity that must be ordered gives a key to the rational use of each meter of the trading area and increases the total profitability of the enterprise.
However, in practice there are difficulties withcorrect account of the LCY. This situation, when the enterprise has a large number of goods with complex identifiers, for example, Bolt M30 GOST 15589-70 and Bolt M30 GOST 7805-70, there is a risk of confusion between these positions. There may be erroneous data about the absence of one LCY and an overabundance of another. To prevent such situations, each enterprise should take care of creating its own transparent system for coding goods, avoiding duplication of designations.
