The Basics of the Modern Inventory Management System

With more businesses than ever relying on their inventory to get through difficult times, it’s important to know just what resources you have at your disposal. Even if your business doesn’t produce goods or materials, it can be helpful to know what assets you have readily available at any given time. This is where inventory management comes in. Today, we want to give you a brief overview of inventory management and how technology can make it easier.

What is Inventory Management?

Simply put, inventory management is how your business controls resources that flow into and out of it. This can include just about anything consumable that your organization goes through, as well as resources that are assigned to employees. This might include how you control and oversee purchasing of new inventory, maintaining enough stock, controlling the amount of resources you have for sale, and fulfilling orders to your customers or clients.

Naturally, inventory management will also include, to an extent, supply chain management, especially if you assemble products on-site. Therefore, having a clear understanding of what you have on-hand in terms of both raw materials and finished goods will be essential for any good inventory management system.

Simply put, inventory management helps you improve business visibility, reduce costs, eliminate waste, and improve efficiency.

What Should You Look for in Inventory Management?

There are four types of inventory that you must consider for your business, although the types may depend on the type of company you run and the goods, products, and services you offer. They include:

• Raw Materials: The goods needed to produce whatever you are selling to your clients or customers.
• Works in Process: The goods that are not currently finished, but in process, perhaps awaiting additional materials or processing as permitted by the workflow.
• Maintenance, Repair, and Operations: These are goods that are used to support the creation of your goods, from raw materials to finished goods.
• Finished Goods: Goods that are ready to head out the door to generate revenue for your business.

There are various ways you can track inventory, but the most effective way to do so is through an automated system that uses a ledger to track your ever-changing inventory through the use of bar code scanning. Essentially, each item or component your organization utilizes will be assigned a bar code, which is then scanned to add or remove it from the inventory as needed. This type of automated system means that there will be less user error and more efficiency during times of inventory and order processing.

As you might expect, tracking your IT resources is absolutely critical, especially when the supply chain has been as disrupted as it has been since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. You’ll need to keep track of what resources you have, where they are, who they have been assigned to, and so on.

Get Started Today!

If your organization is ready to keep better track of its inventory, including your IT resources and computing materials, XFER is here to help. To get started with inventory management solutions, reach out to us at 734-927-6666 / 800-GET-XFER.