What do you do beyond your scope as an Inventory Manager?
Hi all! Looking for advice on workload management in a warehouse/3PL environment.
My team is constantly juggling ongoing projects, cycle counts, and pop-up fires — and the frustration is real across the board.
When we push for process changes with other departments, we often end up looking like the bad guys, even though we're trying to improve accuracy and flow for everyone.
Our team covers a wide range of functions — replenishment, inventory control, counting, and slotting — which means we're pulled into nearly every major project: VAS work, wholesale, fulfillment, receiving, you name it.
The workload pressure is compounded by the fact that if we don't get involved proactively, we almost always end up cleaning up a bigger accuracy mess afterward. So disengaging isn't really a realistic option.
I spend a lot of time building tooling, defining processes, and managing space efficiency on top of the day-to-day. It's a lot, and I'm trying to figure out how to better structure or communicate the team's capacity before burnout sets in.
Has anyone navigated something similar? How did you get other departments to respect inventory team bandwidth?