Best Practices of Inventory Management

Boundless helps you in inventory management and have collated what is called best practices in it.

With these, you can grow your business by leaps and bounds and augment gains.

1. Having an intact inventory control system is best. Two commonly used systems are periodic and perpetual.  Periodic are the ones, which refurbishes ledger periodically i.e. weekly, monthly and quarterly. Perpetual systems are the ones, which updates inventory after each purchase, sale and adjustment. The more frequently it is updated, the easier it is for a business to plan.

2. Have Inventory categorisation. As 80-20 rule applies majorly to inventory, it is better to set priorities straight. (80% sales come from 20% of the products).

3. Have a proper inventory adjuring system. You should know what you need, how much you need and when you need it. This saves one from unwanted circumstances such as inflated inventory costs and longer lead times.

4. Imbrute the inventory system. This standardises the process, saves time and money, increases accuracy and simplifies documentation.

5. Forecast demand as sales may vary due to vicissitude in trends, seasons etc. Thus, demand forecast can help better plan inventory requirements to maintain levels.

6. Perform physical inventory counts. A rubric to control inventory and attune it to the amounts in periodic or perpetual system on the books, physical inventory is normally done once a year normally at the end of the fiscal year. Larger businesses and those preferring periodic or seasonal inventory counts, do it more frequently.

7. Make acclimation as required for goods unsold, obsolete, stolen, damaged or for goods whose market value is lower than the cost of the good.

For more on inventory, call us at +91-11-66797769 or e-mail at info@boundlessindia.com or visit us at http://www.boundlessindia.com.

How to aggrandise supply chain management?

Boundless helps your supply chain management through process convalescent by enhancing communication, refining information, which aids in decision-making and efficient transaction processing. More methods are listed as follows for you to attain effective business.

The ways to enhance management of supply chain are:

1. Communicating with customer and vendors electronically can help with standardising, ordering, receiving and invoicing processes thereby eliminating manual errors. The electronic formats can be interchanged between habitués and vendors after their sign-off.

2. Vendor -managed inventories (VMI) is the need of the hour. In vendor-managed inventories, all incubus of the customer's stock level lies with the vendor. For a businesses, such offering is a differentiator between various vendors. VMI further aids in maintaining customer relationships.

3.  In an effort to guesstimate vendor performance, enterprises need to capture data and need to have some performance metrics. Some of the metrics include lead times, over and short shipments, quality issues, in- time delivery, invoice, order accuracy etc.

4. Boundless offers content updation of portals and for supply chain management to be effective, vendor and customer portals need to be updated as they provide good information. Such portals can provide information on orders open, shipment dates etc. Request for action can be taken care of. Self-services such as order placement and payment transactions too can be facilitated through them. They also provide with delivery dates which further aids in providing production schedules.

5. Pay on receipts systems should be there too which takes information from purchase orders primarily.

Stay tuned to this space for more on supply chain management as we will continue to  provide you with such useful techniques. Boundless offers effective management offerings. And for more on supply chain management, call us at +91-11-66797769 or e-mail at info@boundlessindia.com or visit us at http://www.boundlessindia.com.

Issues In Warehousing

There are certain issues that might affect warehousing big time. Some of them are listed as follows:

Market and product stability

The long-term market growth and the product's stability will influence the size of the warehouse as well as its location. This will also affect the prospective space / location of the warehouse. These considerations can also affect the kind of warehouses and the technology, which is to be used.

Kinds of materials to be stored / handled

Materials can be raw materials, original equipment manufacturer auto spare parts, packaging materials and finished goods. The units stored can vary and be such as carton boxes, containers for liquid boxes, drums, sacks and loads. In case of perishables, special requirements can also be met for temperature and humidity. All this will influence the kind of warehouses and the technology level used.

Warehouse facility: kind, size and location

A warehouse's kind, size and location will also depend on the position of the warehouse in a supply chain network. The inventory level, customer base, the requirement for inventory optimization and overall customer levels should also be considered when deciding the kind, size and location of the warehouse.

Choice of unit load

The selection of unit load such as tote bins, pallets, rolls etc. will depend on the kind of materials stored in the warehouse. Inside a warehouse, it can influence the kinds of storage systems and the options of equipment handling. In terms of transport, it can affect its operations in terms of vehicle loading and unloading and vehicle utilisation.

Boundless helps you with the warehouse management process. It studies and then proposes alternate improvements, so that you never land in trouble. The issues that affect warehousing such as listed above are taken care of by us. For more on warehousing, call us at +91-11-66797769 or e-mail at info@boundlessindia.com or visit us at http://www.boundlessindia.com.