Don’t Make These 5 Common Inventory Mistakes

Believe it or not, inventory management is one of the most important things in the creation of your product. It is the movement of the inventory from raw materials to finished goods and from items to products that creates the flow of money. But, what if you weren’t managing your inventories well? Here are the five most common mistakes and how to avoid them.

No Tracking of Inventories

Not tracking what comes in or goes out: This is perhaps the worst of all mistakes. But, it only worsens when you have more than one location to manage. There might just be situations when you would have days before the requests for replenishments reach you.

Solution? Get an ERP. A good inventory management system can help create tracks for raw materials, intermediate items, and finished goods. And, you can track down every single item right on your desktop. There are two important things that a good inventory management system can do for you: track the required replenishments and record the finished goods turns.

Lack of Inventory Forecasts

Efficient organizations know that customer-satisfaction indexes directly link to meeting production schedules and delivery deadlines. But an absence of the required vision and knowledge may become an impediment.

Inventory management systems can help forecast your finished goods requirements based on trends, demands of finished goods, and production schedules. It is almost essential for you to adopt an inventory management system to keep up with today’s fast-paced, competitive environment.

No Automation

Gone are those days of pens and (piles and piles of) papers. Go paperless! Get an inventory management system for real-time display and analysis of inventories. If you are still using either a manual method or the basic computer-based spreadsheets to manage your inventories, chances are you will run into trouble sooner or later.

Inventory management systems negate the possibilities of human errors. Also, those computer-based spreadsheets may only be good for creating tables, it seems. Today’s inventory management systems can store millions of records, which you can use to search, retrieve, and print the required information and reports in practically no time.

Besides, you cannot edit or manage manual records when you are running out of time. That’s because multiple users can access an inventory management system to record and access real-time information on the inventory statuses for multiple products, requirements, and locations. Now, that’s the efficiency you want in today’s environment.

Lack of Data Integration

Inventory management systems integrate seamlessly with your current databases. This helps create and manage information that flows easily from one module to another, just like the flow of raw materials from receipt bins through production facilities and to the shipment area. And, then you can multiply the benefit of seamless tracking and enablement for every location that you have.

Resistance to Adopt New Technology

Imagine businesses that see large volumes of incoming and outgoing inventories. How difficult would it be for them to manage the volumes efficiently? Now, imagine that scale of inventory management for more than one product, more than one warehouse location, and more than one business operation. It is easy to lose count and track of inventories.

Inventory management systems can help you manage such loads easily. You can even use your handheld devices to track inventories. Such systems can help you with operations like physical count, raw material and intermediate-product management, and storing packaging and finished goods items.

Conclusion

Today’s inventory management systems are equipped to provide a comprehensive inventory-management solution. You can use the systems to track the requirement for raw materials, consumables, and intermediates; create and manage intermediate items; and keep a log of how much finished goods items you have in the inventory. These reliable systems can greatly reduce the possibilities of mistakes and consequently improve your operational efficiency.

Author: Sakshi Tanwani writes for www.batchmaster.co.in, a developer, and vendor of end-to-end ERP solutions for process manufacturing industries such as Food, Beverage, Chemicals, Cosmetics, Foundry, Pharmaceutical and Nutraceuticals. She loves to write on topics that help small and medium sized process manufacturers stay abreast with the latest industry happenings, current needs and ways to overcome their challenges.