In manufacturing, there are many signs that your inventory management is under less-than-optimal control and possibly not getting better on its own. Here are some of the most obvious symptoms of poor inventory management:
- High-cost goods
- Stockouts
- Slow or low inventory turn
- Obsolete items in inventory
- Excessive working capital requirements
- High-cost storage
- Spreadsheet (data-entry) errors
- Customer shipping errors
- Lost or untracked customers
- Imbalanced lead times
- Forecasting impossibility
Of course, there are usually many factors that lead to this list of negative symptoms, but all of them have a root connection to the way you manage your inventory. Which leaves us with this question: How can you get your inventory under tight and accurate control?
- Tightly manage inventory from any location.
- Reduce handling costs.
- Optimize cash flow.
Inventory Management
Many elements go into inventory management, but the bottom line is that you need to make sure you have just the right amount of inventory on hand in the right locations to meet demand—whether that demand is to meet your customers’ service level expectations or to simply supply a work order.
Having a reliable ERP system in place is essential to maintaining successful inventory management. For example, Oracle NetSuite offers many native tools and features to help you make this happen, including tracking inventory in multiple locations, safety stock, re-order points, cycle counts, demand planning and distribution requirements planning.
Maintaining the perfect amount of inventory to support service level expectations is critical. NetSuite offers many tools to automate this process. Preferred stocking levels, lead times and re-order points can be automatically calculated in the system, with suggestions appearing instantly in the order items list. In our multi-location distribution requirements planning solution, more advanced parameters help you balance demand and supply across the entire organization.
By investing in order control software, you are investing in your business. Higher customer satisfaction, increased productivity, and sustained sales will all result in higher cashflow, and of course, the peace of mind offered by the cloud, which has always got your back.
Concerned about your inventory management challenges?
Our team of talented experts can work with your organization to choose the right software and integrate it to streamline your business processes, or we can help optimize your current ERP solution.
