Improving the Inventory Process

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 two days to complete with a large staff. Cycle counting was nearly impossible because of the manual data entry process. In order to make any adds or moves, staff had to go back to a PC for the data entry. The company is looking for an automated solution which enabled personal to have remote connectivity.

Improving the inventory process

The objectives are to find a system that will automate the inventory process. Eliminate the need for excessive time spent by multiple personal manually imputing the data. Generate instant inventory numbers upon demand. Based on the inventory numbers that this new system will provide, the system will be able to forecast needed inventory, control overstocked inventory and track what is not moving at all. Once the system is completely implemented current IS Staff will be trained to be able to maintain the software for the day to day operations.

Currently all inventory that has been moved back to the United States is hand counted, written on paper and then ...

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...pments are automatically entered into MAPICS in real time, so it will no longer be

possible to ship product without properly billing for it. Avoiding a single error of that type saves

the company almost $60,000. Automatic generation of manifested and billing of lading and

MAPICS training time has been reduced by 50%.

Computer technologies is advancing by such a rapid pace that companies are always

trying to keep up with faster more cost effective system. QuikTrac offers that type of solution as

well as changing the system from manual to automated. The security and accessibility has also

been enhanced, thus enabling the company to be incompliance to security laws as well as

implementing a effective and scaleable database management system. The company’s a best way

for them to collect data, manage their inventory and lower the cost of

production.