Dead inventory · FIFO · Working capital

Dead inventory. Finally measured. Tote Bestände. Endlich gemessen. Martwe zapasy. Wreszcie zmierzone. Giacenze morte. Finalmente misurate. Stocks dormants. Enfin mesurés. Stock muerto. Por fin medido. Estoque morto. Finalmente medido.

Dead inventory is the stockpile capital nobody put a number on — material that has not moved in months and ages out of spec. OWL EYE® STOCKPILE turns that invisible problem into a per-zone aging report and a live FIFO alert, so finance and operations stop arguing about a pile nobody surveyed since the last audit.

The CFO angle

Working capital, tied up in unmoved material. Working Capital, gebunden in unbewegtem Material. Kapitał obrotowy zamrożony w nieporuszonym materiale. Capitale circolante, bloccato in materiale fermo. Besoin en fonds de roulement, immobilisé en matière qui ne bouge pas. Capital de trabajo, atrapado en material que no se mueve. Capital de giro, preso em material que não se move.

In most bulk-storage operations, between 10 and 25 % of the stockpile has not been touched in over six months. It sits at the back of the hall, under newer intake, or in the corner the front-loader operator finds awkward to reach. That is dead inventory — and it ties up working capital exactly like unsold goods on a balance sheet.

The numbers are uncomfortable. Ten thousand tonnes of raw material at 80 € per tonne is 800 000 € locked into a hall, financed at whatever your cost of capital happens to be. Worse, the unmoved portion is also the portion that ages: caking, moisture pickup, oxidation, off-spec colour, contamination. By the time someone reaches it, it is downgraded or written off.

OWL EYE® STOCKPILE closes the gap. Every cubic metre carries a timestamp from the day it arrived, so the dashboard finally tells finance and operations the same story. Talk to us if you want a back-of-envelope estimate of the dead-inventory share in one of your halls.

„Dead inventory is the working-capital problem nobody put a number on — because nobody measured the pile often enough to see it."

Used inside the Sachtleben Minerals Group, at proFagus charcoal works and across K+S salt operations to make FIFO reclaim plannable.

FIFO tracking & aging reports · What you get

Three reports that change the conversation. Drei Reports, die das Gespräch verändern. Trzy raporty, które zmieniają rozmowę. Tre report che cambiano la conversazione. Trois rapports qui changent la conversation. Tres informes que cambian la conversación. Três relatórios que mudam a conversa.

Per-zone aging map

The pile is coloured by material age — green for fresh, amber for 30+ days, red for 60+, purple for 90+. Zones are defined once as polygons; aging updates after every scan cycle.

FIFO violation alert

When reclaim happens from a zone that is younger than an older zone next to it, the dashboard flags the violation in real time — straight into the dispatcher's view and the CMMS.

Value-locked report

One signed PDF per month: tonnage per age bracket, value-at-risk per zone, trend over the last quarter. The number finance asks for before the year-end count — ready before the call.

FIFO tracking · How it works

Zone polygon → block model → aging report. Zonen-Polygon → Blockmodell → Alters-Report. Poligon strefy → model blokowy → raport starzenia. Poligono zona → modello a blocchi → report di invecchiamento. Polygone de zone → modèle bloc → rapport vieillissement. Polígono de zona → modelo de bloques → informe de edad. Polígono da zona → modelo de blocos → relatório de envelhecimento.

Three steps from a pile that looks the same every day to a working-capital number you can act on.

Define the zones once

Polygons are drawn on top of the storage layout — by product, by customer, by quality grade or by reclaim lane. Re-usable, version- controlled, takes an afternoon for a full hall.

Temporal 3D block model

Every scan cycle is archived with a timestamp. The system knows exactly when each cubic metre arrived and at which zone — the full intake and reclaim history is queryable backwards in time.

Aging report + FIFO alert

The dashboard derives age per zone, flags FIFO violations live and delivers a monthly value-locked PDF for finance. The data lands in SAP, the BI stack and the CMMS via documented interfaces.

FAQ

Dead inventory & FIFO — what finance and operations ask. Tote Bestände & FIFO — was Controlling und Betrieb fragen. Martwe zapasy i FIFO — o co pytają finanse i operacje. Giacenze morte e FIFO — cosa chiedono finanza e operations. Stocks dormants & FIFO — ce que finance et exploitation demandent. Stock muerto y FIFO — lo que preguntan finanzas y operaciones. Estoque morto e FIFO — o que finanças e operações perguntam.

Questions CFOs, plant managers and stock controllers raise before committing to continuous LiDAR-based stockpile tracking.

Dead Inventory & FIFO

What is dead inventory and how does continuous LiDAR monitoring fix it? ＋

 Dead inventory is bulk material that sits at the back or bottom of a pile for months because reclaim always happens from the same side. It ties up working capital, ages out of spec (caking, moisture, oxidation) and produces unpleasant surprises at year-end physical counts.

OWL EYE® STOCKPILE eliminates the blind spot. Every scan cycle is archived as a 3D block model with a timestamp, so the system knows exactly when each cubic metre of the pile arrived. The dashboard colour-codes the pile by age and flags zones that have not moved in 30, 60 or 90 days — real-time monitoring turns a static "dead corner" into a number you can act on, and FIFO reclaim becomes plannable instead of accidental.

How does LiDAR identify FIFO violations in a stockpile? ＋

 Every scan cycle is archived as a timestamped 3D block model. The pile is partitioned into operator-defined zone polygons (by product, customer or quality grade), and the system tracks the age of material in each zone — derived from when material first appeared at those coordinates.

When reclaim removes volume from a younger zone while an older zone next to it still contains material, OWL EYE® STOCKPILE flags a FIFO violation in real time. The alert names the zone, the age delta and the tonnage moved out of sequence, and is pushed straight to the dispatcher's dashboard and the CMMS. The monthly value-locked report then aggregates violations into a single number for the CFO — including the tonnage at risk of aging out of spec before it is ever touched.