In November that belief was shattered when Caterpillar did a physical inventory at Siwei that led to a trail of fake documents.

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According to CAT, during a physical inventory count last November, it found some discrepancies between recorded inventory and actual inventory at a subsidiary of ERA, Siwei.

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First, physical commodities are really expensive to inventory.

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Almost by definition, ERP focuses almost entirely on the manufacturing, inventory and service of the physical product.

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Half of that was papermaking, ink mixing, printing, transport, inventory, and the warehousing of physical goods.

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There are some operational improvements that could be made similar to how Nordstrom will fulfill online orders from their physical store locations whereas JCP keeps separate DCs and inventory to support online orders.

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There are plenty of off-the shelf-solutions for inventory tracking, sales, fulfilment (both digital and physical), the whole nine yards.

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Physical stores, and even virtual ones, can only carry so much inventory, manage so much administration, and deal with so many suppliers and partners.

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While Rent the Runway does exhaustive quality control to ensure the absolute perfection of their rental inventory, their product is as much an about self-empowerment as it is about a physical product.

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