Customer Profile: A medium scale manufacture of specialized process equipment integrated with PLC control systems for specialized industry applications.
Problem: The company had grown rapidly over the last few years and they did not have an inventory control system, there was no software to log in the stock, there was no ERP to manage the inflow and the outflow of material leading to a lot of chaos, non clarity on inventory, and possibly even pilferage which led to a lot of discomfort to the management.
Solution: Before the system for inventory could be implemented there was a need to design an inventory coding system which could classify the inventory into the various categories so that it could then be fed into a standard ERP or a standard finance inventory accounting software. The company had a huge variety of in-house manufactured items, bought out items which were procured from various Indian and international vendors, a huge array of raw materials of various types which were procured leading to extreme complexity of materials to be handled in the organization. We worked deeply with the business to understand the different categories, for each category based on the specifications of the product we built an inventory coding system which could then be applied to any material coming into the company and could also be used to map any new item which could later come into the organization. So a framework was put in place to map all inventory needs of the organization, thereby making it easy for a structured inventory management tool to be implemented.
Benefit: The organization started experiencing a clear ability to catalog all items, an ability to cross refer items in the bill of materials after the dispatch to the customers, traceability of products across projects and most importantly a framework which could easily be used to bring in a structured ERP system into the organization.
Inventory Management