Communication Services’ new Distribution and Fulfillment Manager Jon Mercy is halfway through completely re-organizing, re-numbering and re-labeling the unit’s product warehouse two months after his arrival.

 

What about his garage at home? He just moved into the house, but his garage is nearly as meticulously organized as well, with everything neatly shelved in enclosed bins.

 

Mercy used to be “a disorganized slob,” he says, but a stint in the Coast Guard straightened him out. His first Coast Guard service was on an icebreaker in the North and South Poles, where he was a small boat coxman and rescue swimmer. For some reason—warmth, perhaps?—he learned to organize on the ship. Thus began his career in inventory management, distribution and fulfillment. Before arriving at Communication Services, Mercy worked in this capacity for an automotive testing company, biomedical and pharmaceutical companies, and, most recently, Portal Publications, which produces greeting cards, posters, and stationery. Along the way Mercy picked up inventory database expertise and practical warehouse experience that he is eager to apply to Communication Services’ physical warehouse and online ordering system.

 

Inventory accuracy is Mercy’s “key driving force.” He wants to eliminate inventory surprises—publications that unexpectedly run out of stock and need immediate reprinting, for example—and have the warehouse organized in such a way that “someone from the street” could find what he or she wanted on the shelves. He has logical solutions too, like putting the most frequently ordered materials nearest the packaging desk so warehouse personnel Tosh Sears and Domingo Garcia don’t have to walk the long aisles over and over throughout the day.

 

So maybe Mercy is not obsessive, after all. He laughs at that, but then describes a computerized database he plans for the shelf bins in his garage so he’ll quickly know what each one holds.