Problem Definition

Finey’s supermarket is a retailing store located in Bangor Ridge, in the parish of Portland has

been in operation since 2001. The company buys and sells various grocery items. The retail store

has an issue over the years of operation with warehousing. The warehouse of the company is a

holding area for inventories that isn’t displayed to the public. The aforementioned issue the retail

store faces is the continuous loss of inventories, without anyone being able to give an account for

the missing inventories. This results in the retail store losing a great deal of profit each year

which is slowly damaging the business's viability and growth.

2004 was when the trend of disappearing stock started after the retail started purchasing a large

amount of stock resulting from excessive demands and the ability to purchase at discounted

prices from suppliers. Since then the problem has grown drastically and has became a large scale

problem even though the retail store should be showing an increase in profit due to the increase

in the population each year . Additionally the supermarket doesn’t have any real competitors in

the area. There was several changes to staff due to the issue but it wasn’t effective.

Furthermore the problem affects both owner and employees. The owner is more inconvenienced

because the business has to bear a higher cost of goods sold which reduces gross profit. A

reduction in gross profit results in the owner receiving a smaller amount of net profit which is

added to the capital. Employees suffer emotionality from the constant questioning and meetings

about missing inventories. When they are called they get interrogated in an ill-mannered way,

which makes them feel disparage at times. The problem which is being investigated can be

solved with the use of information technology.