Improving the Inventory Process Abstract
MMAS manufactures and distributes high-accuracy metering products to the North American utility, sub-metering and industrial markets. The company recently revamped its procurement processes, switching from offshore to domestic parts suppliers for some components to provide more flexibility in its supply chain. Workers at its 100,000 sq ft manufacturing and distribution facility were bogged down with a paper based, manual inventory management process. All inventory moves were written down and key entered into MAPICS on stationary desktop PCs, a time-consuming process that made it difficult to manage the company’s inventory of parts and finished products. Annual physical inventories took
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This is an ERP (Enterprise resource planning) which is a business support system that maintains in a single database the data needed for a variety of business functions such as Manufacturing, Supply Chain Management, Financials, Projects, Human Resources and Customer Relationship Management. An annual inventory takes upward of 2 days to complete.
The company found a technology solution to help its distribution operations keep pace with the company’s growth – QuikTrac. With QuikTrac MMAS will be able to cut the time it takes to complete its physical inventory process in half and significantly improve inventory accuracy and warehouse efficiency using a wireless data collection solution that communicates in real time with its MAPICS enterprise resource planning system. Using label printers, MMAS has deployed bar coded location labels throughout its warehouse. Workers scan the location labels with the mobile computers, and key enter quantities during inventory moves. Warehouse employees will also use the devices for cycle counting, and annual physical inventories.
In order for QuikTrac to be functional several system updates had to occur, software had to be updated and new servers had to be installed in order to hold the abundance of information that would now be input via wireless devices. QuikTrac system requires at least 2.0 GHz with 20 GB HD, 256 MD RAM running Windows XP Pro (Preferred), 2000, or 98 with ODBC
The company instead needs to change to a first in First out approach to keep inventory moving on shelves and develop a new enterprise resource system (Phillips, 2008). In addition to this change which would directly affect the floor employees since it is labor intensive and involves constant moving of product, the company would implement a sales tracking portable device that directly connects the store with the ecommerce site and the distributors. Under this method, store clerks can carry the portable tracker on their person and be able to directly engage with the customer by locating products faster as well as order products directly with the consumer if the product is out of stock or not carried at that location. In addition, the sales tracker will be an inventory tracker with a minimum quantity set with distributors that can automatically order additional product to keep stock or for the company to ship excess material at one location to another location in
Enterprise resource Planning (ERP) is any integrated cross-functional software that reengineers manufacturing, distribution, finance, human resources and other basic business processes of a company to improve its efficiency, agility and profitability.1 On an initial view, an ERP system appears to be the cure for any company’s issues. The installation of such a system offers an organization the opportunity to re-structure their procedures, to coordinate branches’ systems in other geographic locations, unify information and inspire employees via granting them permission to company information. Now these chances exist at heightened costs financially. There are also implementation horrors and labor issues with which must be dealt with. A
In business, it is important for companies to be able to communicate effectively. Each department of a company relies on the other departments as they add to the value chain. One way for a company to integrate its different departments is enterprise resource planning. ERPs are software programs that allow companies to join together data across operations on a company wide basis (Jessup and Valacich 248). ERPs store company information in a common database and allow all departments to access it from one central location (Koch). Companies without ERPS may contain many legacy systems, each operating with different
In addition, the company can benefit from a distinctly higher level of productivity as well as an increase in the morale of staff as a result of putting in place this technology. In other instances, it has been argued that putting in place this technology will be key in ensuring that the company’s intranet will be a helpful aid in ensuring that each of the store’s managers and employees will be able to clearly track their sales and inventory (Zhang & Li, 2009). Considering the fact that the company is a retailer that is growing retail store, the use of iPads will be critical in ensuring an automation of the store’s processes of supply chain which will be an aid in enabling them to efficiently receive inventory and ensuring that the pricing of shelf labels as well as in performing of markdowns (Fosso et al,
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