In today’s episode, I am interviewing Orion Avidan about the process of elimination and delegation, and what that means for her. Also, we touch on topics like replenishment, and what her processes would look like if done manually. 

Orion is the chief inventory profitability expert at Retail Adventure. In addition, she helps Amazon sellers increase their Margins by 20% through excess inventory elimination, and does this using the balanced inventory system.

She is a caring, detail-oriented individual who has worked at hospitals, a chemical plant, startups, marketing agencies, etc. 

Tell us about yourself and your origin story? (01:58)

• Orion says he came from a very academic background, where they were taught to go to school, go to college, and obtain numerous degrees. Finally, you enter the job world where you work to get promoted. 
• Life happened, and everything didn’t go according to plan for her. She didn’t fit into the job world, and couldn’t get along with employers. 
• She realized that she wanted to do something valuable that could contribute to the world. She didn’t want to be stuck in just another job. 
• She accidentally ran into Dr. Eli Goldratt, who developed the theory of constraints. She was mesmerized, and before long, she was attending all his conferences and challenging what he was teaching. 
• She started looking for a niche she would fit into and found that inventory was her passion, and she could add a lot of value to it. 

 What process are we focusing on today? (04:33)

• She says our topic at hand will be replenishment, which is the process of deciding how much inventory is needed, which exact SKU to bring in, where you want them in your supply chain, and at what time. 
• Looking at it from a manual standpoint, replenishment is a big data process; a lot of decisions have to be made for every item at the SKU level. 
• Doing it manually is very intensive, and requires a lot of data collection. There are a lot of dots to connect, and heuristics to abide by. Big decisions have to be made with little data to rely on. 
• What’s more; they don’t know how their decisions will impact, or be impacted by the future. This process is hard, complex, and very fragile. 

In terms of where the data is now, where it needs to go, and what happens to it in between, what is the spark for you? (07:09)

• Orion says some of the data is readily available, or easy to obtain. For instance, how many units do you have available on Amazon? That data is available and trustworthy on Amazon. 
• Other pieces of data are not only unavailable, but they also don’t exist. 
• This non-existent data contain questions like how many units will your customer wants in two months, or who will be your keyword competitors in three months’ time? 
• She says our current situation with COVID-19 is a good example; no one predicted a lockdown, yet you have to run your inventory through it. 

What does it look like when you decide to delegate a task? (15:25)

• Orion says she is currently delegation two tasks in her life, the first is financial tasks like bills. 
• She says it’s very hard to automate this process, because the data shifts around, but its always the same data that has to be entered into the system correctly. Her 15-year-old son is in charge of completing this task.
• The second task she delegates is content creation. She writes her own content for LinkedIn and articles, but someone else proofreads and edits it. 
• Her writing is very technical, so she has someone who edits her writing in such a manner that it’s understandable for everyone else. 
• This process requires someone who is not a machine, who can apply judgment. It has to be an external person because she is too involved. 

How do you decide whether a process should be eliminated? (16:48)

• Orion says it’s a difficult question for her because she’s very bad at eliminating. She’s quite attached to her processes. 
• She doesn’t like letting things go, but the first thing she eliminated was her tendency to jump in and help when the other person didn’t necessarily want her help. 
• In inventory, you need to eliminate the idea that you know what will happen in the future so that you can work on what is happening now. Let the market pull you, instead of trying to push back. 
• In her own life, she is trying to stop pushing herself, and those around her, into doing things. She’s trying to find a way to pull, instead of push. 

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