Inventory Management is part of supply chain management.It is the process of ordering, storing and using the company’s inventory without excess or shortage.
The attribute of Good Inventory Management Technology
• Product rationalization
• Decentralized warehouse
• Track your stock in real-time
• Prevent Shortages & Excess
• Optimization
• Forecasting the demand
• Reducing ordering cost
• Improve the equipment availability and maintainability
Dealing with your stock isn’t constantly a simple thing you can do. It goes through hours checking your stock with a pen and paper, just to decide the numbers don’t make any sense/items are absent. We realize that it tends to be a tough moment in inventory management. It might include a ton of slip-ups and a lot of time before finding a strategy that works best for warehouse handling. Conventional strategies can be amazingly tedious and exorbitant. They additionally need precision and permit space for human blunder. Something that numerous organizations don’t understand is that better stock administration can be accomplished by utilizing an innovation that has been made to streamline these procedures.
Technology changes make ease of every auditing and inventory managing process. From pen/paper to cloud-based/software applications is a major change over, however, it will have a significant effect on your strategic policies of inventory control.
Traditional Techniques for Inventory Management
- Periodic Inventory System (FIFO & LIFO)
- Perpetual Inventory system
- Auditing
- Preventive Maintenance
Periodic Inventory System (FIFO & LIFO): This is the classical way of inventory management working without working daily. This inventory system is suited for smaller businesses. These inventories are managed by physically without any tracking.
There is a huge possibility of error and man-made mistakes.
Perpetual Inventory system: It is easy to get rid of obsolete goods by streamlining orders with the help of electronic systems. It is easy to manage and can reduce man-made mistakes. Sales of items can be manageable and alarms help to raise the order automatically if the items are low through electronic systems and software.
Ordering the goods at the right time by forecasting the demands helps excessive storage and it will reduce the inventory cost and space.
It helps to avoid shortages and hence would improve plant productivity.
Auditing: The auditing would be easy with modern inventory software by tracking the ordering quantity and remaining goods. To improve the accuracy, a manual count of inventory is necessary to cross verify for matching the ordered and remaining count.
Preventive Maintenance: To keep an asset healthy, it is very important to take care of the components that equipment is acting upon. Preventive Maintenance projects contribute significantly to gear unwavering quality and give the information to help a proactive maintenance program.
Some technologies can make warehouse management easy and simple.
Continue reading to know how these technologies are serving.
Technologies in Inventory Management
- Automated storage and retrieval system
- AIDC (Automated identification and data capture)
- Electronic Digital Signboards
- Digital Reader
Automated storage and retrieval system: ASRS or AS/RS consists of a variety of computer-controlled systems for automatically placing and retrieving loads from defined storage locations.
This is an expensive inventory system, but the accuracy of inventory management is high.
- Vertical lift module.
- Horizontal carousel.
AIDC (Automated identification and data capture : AIDC frameworks are utilized to manage stock, conveyance, resources, security, and records.
- Barcode inventory system
- Radio Frequency Identification Scanner inventory system
- Optical Character Recognition(OCR)
- Barcodes
- Smart Cards
Barcode inventory system : The barcode scanners are one of the most used technology. Handheld barcode scanners based on barcodes that accustomed to record inventory returning to the business.
The product area unit counted and labelled with a barcode as they’re received, then scanned with the barcode scanner so that they are entered in the inventory system.
Radio Frequency Identification Scanner inventory system : Both the RFID technology and barcode technology involve the scanning of the product to enter them into the system.
The main distinction between the two is that barcode systems use barcodes written on items of paper, whereas RFID uses little microchips that are either placed on a tag attached to the product or on the packaging of the product itself.
Electronic Digital Signboards: To keep up proficiency and quality control in your warehouse(s), you must utilize process the board procedures for lean and JIT (Just in Time) systems. The basic information that is handwritten can be noted by these electronic digital signboards which give easy access to all kinds of information, updates and production numbers for you and your staff to see and react to right away.
Digital Reader: Quality control is made easy with these digital readers as they don’t need to carry physical spreadsheets, or record onto QC sheets after estimating product quality checking. Warehouse managers today can just scan the items with a digital reader– which would then be able to be transferred into the organization’s software for continuous outcomes without any delays.
