Inventory Management Basics #inventorymanagement
Shop floor management is more than just work order, project management, and time tracking. It is also time and materials, expenses and inventory, bill of materials, and material handling. So, we bring you inventory management to augment those barcode time tracking features you rely upon daily.
Consider these interesting articles and videos. Make sure to scroll down below the videos for more info.
Automate Inventory Management
You're used to scanning projects and tasks to track time on the shop floor. But did you know you could scan inventory and bill of materials names? Yep, just scan the name of any item in inventory, and it is deducted. When the quantity in stock goes below a preset level, the program will automatically replenish using a script you provide.
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Scanning Inventory and Expense Barcodes
A few special options let you create expense records for each inventory item you scan. That means you now have the date/time, amount, inventory name, and the employee who scanned it. Use those records for your time and materials reports. Or, pull them into Excel with XLST.
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Scan Inventory and Expense Barcodes on the Shop Floor
Inventory Management With Scripting
Here are the actual nuts and bolts of replenishing inventory with scripts. When you scan inventory or BOM items, they are deducted. And when they call below a certain level, a script can be called. You'll have to write the script, but it's trvial for IT professionals. You simply tell the program how to replenish that item. You could employ a new work order to tell shop personel to build new parts, or send an email, or call web services, or write a new task into the database. Anything you can imagine is available here.
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Replenish Inventory With Scripts
Track Time and Inventory
As we stated earlier, it's not just about time tracking and project management. Consider how inventory and bill of materials plays into your shop floor automation. Put a barcode scanner on the shop floor and you're tracking both time and materials.
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Barcode Inventory and Bill of Materials
BOM's hold a list of inventory items. When you scan a BOM, you are deducting all the inventory items in it. BOM's can also hold smaller BOM's. So scanning them drills into the lower-level BOM's and then into the actual inventory items within. Everything is deducted.
Actually, it turns out that you can add and subtract BOM's and inventory items. So when items come into the recieving dock you can add them. Or, when production builds new parts, you can add them to inventory as well.
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Scan Expenses on the Shop Floor
When you scan expense templates, you can produce both an expense record and deduct from inventory at the same time. That means your time and expense reports show records for both the hours you spent and the materials you used. Both time and expenses can be billed to clients at rates and values you set. Expense templates can also be used for hourly equipment use. Scan an expense template, and you've just used a forklift for eight hours. That was simple.
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Also see:
Barcode Scanning in Manufacturing
