Catching Typos Before They Become Inventory Ghosts
Published 2026-05-15 by Faraz Rahimi
A one-character SKU typo does not error. It creates a second item that does not exist and empties one that does.
Tags: Python, Data Quality, Warehouse, Validation, unlisted
Inventory ghosts are often born at a keyboard. Extra digits, O versus 0, a paste that included a newline.
I validate against the known SKU table at the edge: scanner input, OCR output, and manual entry. Unknown SKUs go to a hold queue, not into on-hand.
Fuzzy match is a suggestion, not a write
If they typed something close to a real SKU, show the real one and ask. Auto-correcting master data is how you merge two items that were supposed to stay apart.
I log the near-misses. A hotspot on one SKU means the label is hard to read or the code is hostile to humans.
Ghosts need a hunt
A weekly query for SKUs with inbound and no location, or location and no master record, is janitorial work that pays for itself. Python plus SQL is enough. You do not need a data platform to start.
