Gil's yard, indexed

On Saturday I walked your yard for about six minutes, taking pictures on my phone and saying out loud where I was: Row One, the container, Row Two, Row Three, Bays Two to Four, the other side, the rear wall.

• 68 photos in total, 63 of them taken while the recorder was running.
• Each photo is matched to the sentence I was saying at that second, so every picture knows where it was taken.
• A vision model read every photo and wrote down what it saw: the part types, how many, wrapped or open, and any numbers or labels it could read.
• The result is one spreadsheet, a row per photo, built automatically. Nobody typed it.

What the photos show, by part type: transmissions are everywhere (about 556 sightings across the photos), then body parts (42), engines (40), steering racks (23), transfer cases (22), differentials (12) and radiators (8). These are sightings, not units: the same transmission can show up in two or three overlapping shots. A proper count comes from the next step below.

Wrapped stock: 51 transmission sightings, 32 engines and 8 transfer cases were shrink-wrapped.

The photos picked up the codes chalked on your orange racks and read them back:

• Orange racks: 1-B-P-9, 2-C-P-7, 2-C-P-8, 2-C-P-9, 3-B-P-1, 3-B-P-7, 3-C-P-6, 4-B-P-3, 4-B-P-8, 4-C-P-3, 4-C-P-7, 4-C-P-8.
• Green racks on the rear wall: a different scheme, beam numbers 1 to 15 plus marks like X-3 and L-A-11.
• Stock numbers on the units themselves were readable in many photos, in blue paint, marker or on paper tags (for example 24735, 62204, 4951, 64238, E1667).

That is the hard part done. What is missing is the link between them: which stock number sits at which code, and the transmissions on the ground, which have no code at all.

A rough sketch, built on what you already chalk on the racks:

• Zone: the names from the walk. Shop, Container, Row 1 to 3, Bay 1 to 4, Other Side, Rear Wall.
• Rack, level, pallet: keep your 3-C-P-6 style on the orange racks, and give the green rear racks the same pattern.
• Floor rows get a code too: each line of pallets on the ground in a bay gets a number painted on the pavement, for example Bay 2, Floor Row 1.
• Every unit carries one stock number, and the index ties that number to its zone, rack and pallet.
• Moving a unit means saying it out loud: 'moved 24735 from Bay 2 floor to 4-B-P-8'. The recording updates the location.

• Answer the phone with a location. A customer asks for a part; you search the stock number or the part type and see where it sits and a picture of it.
• Aging. Every unit has a first-seen date, so you can see what has sat for a year and what moves in a week.
• What sells. Units that leave the index are sales; over a few months that shows which parts earn their rack space.
• New revenue. Good cores can be listed for rebuilders and resold, instead of waiting for a walk-in.
• Cost and payment per unit, if you want it: removal cost, price paid, revenue and returns, on the same row.
• Rack discipline before new racks. Know what you have and where before spending on more shelving.

• Make and model. Most transmissions came back as just 'transmission'. The model only named a make where a badge or grille made it obvious (Ford, Kia, Nissan, Chevrolet).
• One unit, one photo. Wide shots of a whole aisle count the same unit several times.
• The fix is simple: one close shot of each unit's tag or ID plate, with its stock number said out loud. That gives an exact count and a make and model per unit.

• Walk and talk. One person, a phone and a recorder. No typing in the yard.
• Drop the files. The photos and the recording go into one folder.
• The index comes back the same day, one spreadsheet you can search and filter.
• Keep it current. Re-walk one bay a week, or record each unit as it comes in and goes out.

Pick one bay, Bay Two for example. I walk it with you, one close shot per unit with its stock number, and we check the index against your own records. If it matches, we do the rest of the yard.

Robert Weiss, INCIPE Inc.