The Shelf Edge department oversees all of the inventory counts. They are responsible for clearing them everyday, but they do not do so largely due to lack of time available by their employees. Everyday when a shipment of goods comes in they are scanned in and their inventory counts as automatically adjusted up to what they currently have. Throughout the day as customers buy product and when the items are scanned at the register, the inventory counts are adjusted down. Also, some items become out of date and an employee of the department is responsible for removing the product from the shelf and scanning the item out along with providing a reason for why the item is being removed. This process is done so that the inventory counts will properly reflect items on hand. However the scanning out of the item is often overlooked which creates the problem of the counts not being accurate.

Every item has a capacity, which is the number of items that can be placed on the shelf. When the capacity is reduced to half then items need to be reordered. The system will only allow the reorder to occur when capacity is reduced to half in the computer. When people do not scan out items when they go out of date the count does not ever get to half capacity, which prevents the item from being ordered. When this happens the items must be cleared out by the Shelf Edge department. Each individual department can not clear their own counts because of internal controls against theft of items.