Cosmos Surfaces · Supply Chain Analyst · 2020 — 2021
Recovering a damaged shipment without delaying the installation
A six-bundle stone shipment arrived severely damaged and was already committed to a commercial installation. Rather than write the lot off and wait on replacement stock, I built an alternative fulfilment plan from what survived.
SAP · WMS
- Shipment
- 6 bundles committed to a single commercial installation
- Constraint
- COVID lead times a replacement international shipment would not have arrived in time
- Project
- ~$50K customer installation completed without replacement stock
Disposition of the damaged lot
- Usable — dimensions recorded and matched to the installation
- Unusable — damaged beyond salvage
- Recovered sections
- Older undamaged lot in stock
- Installation requirements covered
Challenge
A six-bundle lot of Brown Fantasy, worth roughly $18K and already committed to a commercial installation, arrived severely damaged. Replacing it meant another international shipment during COVID, when replenishment lead times were long and unreliable. The customer’s installation date would not survive the wait.
What I did
- Inspected the full lot with the warehouse team, separating material that was genuinely unusable from sections with enough intact surface area to still serve.
- Recorded the usable dimensions of the salvageable pieces rather than writing the shipment off as a single loss.
- Searched existing inventory and found an older undamaged Brown Fantasy lot that could cover the main installation areas.
- Built an alternative fulfilment plan pairing the older stock with the recovered sections from the damaged shipment.
- Worked with the warehouse, inventory and sales teams to match available pieces against the customer’s actual requirements and present the material’s condition openly.
Decision
Rather than treat the shipment as either usable or a write-off, I matched surviving surface area against what the installation actually required.
Outcome
The customer accepted the proposed mix of undamaged and recovered material and completed the installation without waiting for another international shipment.
About one-third of the damaged lot was recovered as usable material, reducing what would otherwise have been written off, and keeping a roughly $50K project on its original schedule.