Inventory plays a peculiar role in any business setup. Both the amount of raw material or final product in stock, their age and their storage are peculiar to the production and distribution. Inventory control, in simple terms, is defined as the Management of Inventory and Stocks in a business.
Management and Control of Inventory includes multiple steps like:
- Analysing Stocks and Purchases: Stock analysis, as the name suggests refers to the recording of the products available in the storage facility. It also includes making sure the quantity of products in the storage is enough to meet the Demand and Supply Chain. The process also calls for a check on the purchase of products.
- Distribution of Products: Distribution of products in the inventory according to categories and subcategories makes the process of record making a whole lot easier.
- Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation of Production: The comprehensive evaluation of production is a part of wider demand and supply chain management. This evaluation is necessary for increasing the efficiency of production and also reducing its cost.
- Tracking and Forecast: Development of algorithms for tracking the inventory is an important part of the Inventory Management System as well. Tracking of shelf-life of products and forecasting the availability of products in the inventory in necessary to make sure that the business is not disrupted.
- Multiple Location Database: Coordination between the multiple storage facilities and a common database for supporting the collective calculations and records make the process efficient and hassle-free.
Warehouse Management system is developed by Inventory Management Solutions to carry out these functions easily. This process includes segregation of stock in categories, recording of product details, replenishment, Safety stock count, etc.
With the evolution of technology, the process of recording and analysis has also changed. The process of manual stock evaluation is a challenging job to do as it includes counting, segregating and updating the log continuously in a fixed amount of time. Hence, modern inventory control systems use barcode-based control systems. You might have come across many instances when you buy a product in a supermarket and the employee scans the barcode on the product before billing it. This method updates the vacancy of the particular item from the stock in the supermarket database. The barcode-based inventory control system works on the same principal where every product is given a unique identity in the format of a barcode. This unique identity is necessary for registering the product into the inventory database. The product is registered on the basis of predefined categories and subcategories. This makes the tracking of products a lot more efficient. The movement of product in the storage facility, its date of manufacture, expiry date, everything is recorded in the format of the barcode.
The biggest challenge in any Inventory Management is Lead Time Variability. In any Supply Chain, there persists a certain uncertainty about transportation delays, weather, security, identification mistakes, etc. It is also not always possible or right to predict the customer based on the last order but not replenishing the stocks can lead to material shortage. Such issues pile up to create greater problems like production halts, which are bad for any business. An ideal Inventory Management Solution will:
- Analyse market trends through data regularly to forecast possible demands and withdrawals.
- Provide real-time updates on supply chain conditions.
- Ensure secure and successful supply.
The secret of any successful business is the quality of the product. The better the quality, the more consumers it would attract. Hence, quality assurance is a crucial component of any business establishment and is also a part of an Inventory Control System. The process of quality assurance calls for evaluating and testing the product against another product of the same category.
To carry out these tasks efficiently, ESSPL is the best choice available in the market. We develop Inventory Management Solutions which are especially dedicated to cater to the tasks suggested in order to minimize the cost and maximize the profit with complete efficiency.
