Building Custom Inventory Management Software for a Distribution Company

Overview of the Project

The manufacturer was wasting important time in analyzing inventory imbalances between the shop floor, warehouse, and procurement departments. Manual records and disparate data made it difficult to track material usage, discover unanticipated losses, and maintain reliable inventory statistics for production planning.

The business needed a central platform to track inventory activity from the receipt of materials through the issuance of components for production. The system had to enable raw material categorization, batch tracking, purchase receipts, production difficulties, stock transfers, cycle counts, adjustment approvals, supplier data, and configurable inventory rules.

Our supply chain software development company built a manufacturing-specific platform that brought warehouse and production data together in one connected ecosystem. Digital stock movements, adjustable approval workflows, barcode verification, and automatic variance identification provided managers with better visibility on material availability. Historical transaction records also allowed for the investigation of anomalies and improvements in inventory control procedures.

Challenges

• Different teams kept different inventories for the same items.
• The material used often varied according to what was being produced.
• Warehouse teams required quicker ways to validate physical counts.
• Unexpected fluctuations in stock weren’t immediately visible to managers.
• Tracking the batch information via the production activities proved difficult.
• Inventory adjustments required a number of manual reviews and approvals.
• There were no historical records available to examine the discrepancies.