Inventory planning and control is the core of any manufacturing business. The purpose of inventory control (or stock control) is to regulate and maximize the company’s warehouse inventory. It will help organize the resources (manpower and equipment) required in managing production run, manufacturing costs, time and labor in shop floor operations.
By having a dynamic, scalable and innovative manufacturing inventory software, manufacturers can easily achieve their business goals. It helps increase productivity, produce quality goods, reduce waste, prevent overstocks, shortages, avoid piling up of dead stock and other costly problems – most importantly client satisfaction.
As a manufacturer, especially new in the business, you may think that inventory management is an easy job. But, the story on the other side of the fence is quite different. Yes, it’s not that easy. However, inventory management software makes things easier for you as you get rid of manual data entries in spreadsheets and even in the system. This is all because of the automation that a software brings along with to help you manage your company’s inventory.
Moreover, with the flourishing business, the demands for products will surely skyrocket and you will find yourself in trouble. Dealing with such difficulties demands you to implement manufacturing inventory control in your production operations. Remember, even a single inaccuracy in your inventory data or inefficiency in your stock management will not bring harm to your production process, but will affect your entire manufacturing business operations. The eventual outcome will be client dissatisfaction since you fail in timely fulfilment of his order and hence his expectations.
Regulate What Already Exists in Your Stock:
Inventory control is simply defined as managing your company’s stick as soon as it arrives at your warehouse or any other storage location. It solely deals with maximizing your stock management efficiency by optimizing and regulating what you already have; be it raw material or finished goods.
Manufacturers of all sizes and types, need to maintain three types of inventories. These include;
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Raw materials (anything waiting in the queue to be worked on)
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Work-in-progress (items that are under process or being worked on)
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Finished goods (products that have been manufactured and ready to ship)
Now, you realize how complex and difficult inventory management and stock control is. This could be made easy through inventory software manufacturing.
In these software solutions Automation is the key to save you time, avoid overheads and prevent pain. It is an open fact that everything is becoming challenging with the passage of time, especially during the economic crisis – covid as a global pandemic is making things worse than ever before. This makes it important for manufacturers to come up with the right solutions to meet the customer demand. They need to cope with reduced business and marketing activities, cash flow issues and supply chain problems to stay intact, and winning the bottom line – business growth and scalability with profitable success. The inventory management module in any modern process manufacturing software is the right solution to try your hands on.
Inventory Management Software
Let’s take a look at how inventory management software helps reorganize and regulate your company’s stock, and ultimately improve inventory turnover ratio.
Well, before getting into it, you must ask yourself a few important questions that will certainly help you find the right inventory management solution.
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What items and quantities do you need to keep?
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What stock and quantities do you need to track?
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How competitive is your manufacturing cost?
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The time threshold you need for order fulfillment?
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Quantity of stock you need to meet future demand?
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What primary features do you want to manage your inventory?
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What are you willing to invest in buying an inventory software?
Once you have clear and justified answers to all these questions, you can get better control of your stock using a manufacturing inventory management solution that offers extensive features at the price you can easily afford.
Here we bring you key practices using which you can pull through the inventory management challenges.
Current Inventory Analysis:
Firstly, you need to evaluate the stock currently available in your warehouse. For this, you should know everything about the product categories, work in progress and storage locations, etc. Here, you need better visibility on your existing stock and this could be best done with an inventory management app. Moreover, knowing what’s in your stock allows you to manage your sales and purchase orders in a better, seamless way.
Identify Profitable Products:
Cost-effectiveness is a crucial factor in any business success. So, as a manufacturer you should also identify your cost-effective products. For this, you need to calculate the cost of each product you manufacture and separate the items that can bring you higher sales and profit margins. Here, you must develop a robust sales strategy for the goods with a maximum margin because profitability is your business bottom line.
Determine Stock Value:
Your inventory is your business capital on hold. To gain the maximum profit out of it, you have to determine the inventory value and make changes in inventory planning for increased sales. For this, you need to assess the value of your raw material and finished goods in stock and it will allow you to regulate your inventory levels for improved liquid assets.
Reduce Dead Stock:
Just like stocking out of raw materials can decline your manufacturing potential, dead stock is equally lethal for your business. If on one side you need to determine the best-selling products with a high turnover, the other side needs you to get rid of unsold items sitting on the shelves. It will cause you to bear unnecessary surplus costs and therefore, you must offload the inactive inventory – use promotional offers and clearance sales to reduce dead stock.
With all this in mind, their practical implementation will also help simplify your product and sales management in addition to inventory management.
Wrap Up:
Maximize your company’s warehouse efficiency using MIE Trak Pro, meeting your evolving business needs. As the best inventory management software, it matches with all sorts of manufacturing businesses across all industries. You can seamlessly manage your inventory with a high turnover ratio. Get a demo now to make a well-informed purchase decision of buying this innovative, fully integrated and flexible software solution.
Source: https://www.mie-solutions.com/mie-blog/tag/best+inventory+management
Inventory planning and control is the core of any manufacturing business.
The purpose of inventory control (or stock control) is to regulate and maximize the company’s warehouse inventory Readmore...
The inventory management system can be considered the backbone of an organization.The method of organizing and maintaining inventories across the production chain is known as inventory management.
Businesses must effectively track inventory stocks in financial records as well as by regular audit to maintain effective order processing.
This gives the foundation for making inventory consumer choices and excellent product stocking levels to better satisfy inventory demand.A business must consider the characteristics of the product to improve it by maintaining the proper goods to strengthen the inventory management system.
Let’s look at how we improve inventory management:Delivery to CustomerAn excellent strategy to manage your sales volume and delivery speed are to use customer delivery.
Inventory management solutions and control require track of the inventory records of the quantity of stock on the store at any one time.Perform frequent cycle countsRegular cycle counts enable detection of minor inconsistencies as quickly as possible.The product should be labelledA well-organized and systematic warehouse sorts half the problems.
Labelling items makes it easier.Eliminate unwanted traffic to the warehouse.Access cards and standardized clothes help ensure that everybody managing inventories have been qualified and authorized.
What are Different Types of Inventory Management Systems and Their Pros & Cons?Departmental overstocks and overfilled warehouses is a challenge that growing businesses face today.
One of the most common causes of overstocking is the lack of centralized systems.
Let’s now discuss these major types of inventory management systems and their pros and cons.1- Using Inventory spreadsheetMany small businesses use spreadsheets like excel for keeping track of their inventory.
This type of inventory management system can cause many errors & issues like human errors.
This method is easily accessible but costly because you have to hire extra staff to manage your inventory on excel.Pros :There is no need of installing or purchasing any new software/set-up.
No installation requiredCons:Generally doesn’t fulfil your management needsHigh chances of human errorsNot easy to scaleHave very limited functions2 – ERP SystemsErp systems refer to an integrated approach to business planning & operations of inventory management.
Let’s be honest: all-night stock take blitzes and over-complicated excel spreadsheets are painful to use, unnecessarily labor-intensive, and incredibly outdated.Why torture yourself and your team when there are cheaper and faster options available online?
Luckily for you, cloud inventory management is actually more affordable than the old-school methods you’re currently using and that’s just one perk.Below we’ve compiled seven reliable ways, cloud inventory management is a smart investment for your business.
Instead of combing through piles of reports from different systems and departments or worse making “educated” guesses cloud software lets you view up to the minute data on inventory levels through easy-to-understand reports and dashboards.And instead of relying on special, manual stock-takes that require extra labor and could interrupt your operations (costly for growing businesses and large, multi-location companies alike), cloud inventory software often includes features like QR code tracking that allow you to actively measure stock as it flows through your operations which can save you much more than the cost of a monthly software subscription.But the time-savings don’t end there the automation cloud inventory systems bring can drastically reduce the number of costly human errors you and your team make.2.Get Up-To-Date Inventory Reports & InsightsIf you’re business savvy, you probably know your top 5 best-selling products but do you know your lowest-selling?
You may notice how well you sell during Christmas, but do you know when demand actually peaks and troughs?Questions like these are answered by inventory reports automatically generated by cloud software.
By knowing your lowest-selling items, you can make strategic decisions like upgrading those products, changing your marketing tactics, or ditching them altogether to focus on something new.And knowing when demand for your products is actually at its peak, you’ll be able to order enough stock without overdoing it, saving money and storage space while also maintaining enough safety stock to prevent “out of stock” notices that cost, you customers.With the inventory reports, you’ll get from cloud inventory software, you’ll be able to deeply understand the last quarter so you can effectively forecast for the next, which means better customer service and faster business growth.3.Speed Installation & Easier Employee TrainingThe old way of doing business required you to install software on each and every computer your team uses and have a dedicated IT department to keep that software running.This cuts into profits slow down training time and increase labor costs.
Cloud software doesn’t require any additional employees or special hardware you just log in and get to work!And since they don’t rely on dedicated in-person training to teach your team how to use the new software, most cloud companies have streamlined their software’s learning curve so that everyone can understand the basics and start using it on day one.4.Quick QR Code Tracking SystemsQR and barcodes are essential to modern cloud inventory management; if you’re not using them, you’re practically living in the supply chain dark ages.Paired with the right cloud software, they provide detailed, real-time insight into your inventory levels across your operations, saving you from ordering too much (which forces you to sell at clearance prices) or ordering too little (which forces you to break out that costly “out of stock” sign).While this is a more effective strategy than depending on educated guesses, with a reliable cloud inventory management system that uses QR or barcode technology, a few simple changes to your production processes can provide much more accurate data that lets you know exactly how much inventory you have in stock – saving you hours of time and reducing human error.5.Smooth & Continuous Ecommerce IntegrationCan you imagine manually entering all the data from your e-commerce platform into your inventory management system, and then again into your accounting software?
With inventory levels fluctuating on a daily basis, it’s no wonder that many retail businesses operate on inaccurate numbers.
The majority of inventory problems stem from poor inventory management practices.
When you have poor inventory management practices, the likelihood of lost sales increases significantly which often leads to an inaccurate ordering process that results in late deliveries of stock to your suppliers, which then damages your business’ reputation among them.
Fortunately, there is a solution: inventory management software.
This essential tool helps companies identify trends in their inventory and allows them to better plan for fluctuations.
If false orders are regularly being made, then having an inventory software that helps you regularly reconcile orders with your physical inventory will result in fewer instances of false orders being placed.
