# Canister refills to wait on a countersigned Bottom Sighting

> A School of Continuous Improvement paper scores independent bulk-foods stores on how they refill a scoop bin, and the University adopts the fourth level for its own canisters.

The bottom layer of a scoop bin is somewhere the University has begun to take an
interest. "Notes on the Bottom of the Bin", a paper from the School of
Continuous Improvement published today, scores 52 independent bulk-foods stores
on five named levels of bin turnover, and the University's own canisters will
now be refilled to the fourth.

> Most of what a shop does well happens out of sight, and the bottom of a bin is
> about as far out of sight as it gets.
>
> --- Dr Ingeborg Nwachukwu, Lecturer and Convenor, Capability Sprints

The paper, written with Dr Joost Nwosu and Dr Solveig Adeyemi, arranges the
everyday habits of refilling along a ladder, from the bin that is only ever
topped up to the bin that is washed and dated, and follows a small marker
through each store's stock to see how long a lentil, an oat or a spoonful of
flour waits to be reached. Dr Adeyemi called the ladder "a short staircase with
a landing at the fourth step".

From the next teaching period, every tea, sugar, coffee and oat canister in a
University building will be emptied to its base before it is refilled, and a
second member of staff will countersign the sighting before the new stock is
opened. The rule applies however full a canister is. Washing and dating, which
the paper describes as the fifth level, are not required of any canister.

The University is glad to hold its own shelves to a standard that 43 of the 52
stores in the study did not meet.

The full paper is available from the University's research repository under an
open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.4jdj1t.