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.

Objectives of Inventory Management

Through inventory management, the following objectives are met which are related to investment cost and service level. 
• The control process should be designed to premeditate policies in quantitative parameters so that consistency in operation can be achieved.

• Give decision rules in terms of quantitativeness that ushers in inventory control response.

• Adopt the simplest mathematical methods to make sure that daily calculations are performed. 

• Provide unpredented reporting for non-routine situations accurately.

• Provide appropriate levels of information to challenge and to replace system decisions. 

Boundless helps you effectuate all the above objectives accurately. 

The four basic components of inventory management, which Boundless has identified basis its experience, are as follows:

• Replenishment Stock- Determined by the ordering frequency and the quantity ordered, this is a stock resulting from policy ordering.

• Safety Stock - This kind of stock is stored for being perseverent with the demand / supply uncertainty.

• Anticipation Stock - Stock procured in advance of requirement.

• Movement Stock - This kind of stock can be dis jointly identified and is the kind which is in infiltration between suppliers and the customers. 

Boundless sees two main factors when it comes to inventory management:

• Tracking of quantity of stock in hand - This kind of monitoring ensures that there are sufficient products to meet the customer's requirements. The quantity is measured by stocktaking method on a regular basis. 

• Tracking of product's quality - This kind of monitoring guarantees, that the available products in stock are of high quality. The quality is measured by regular visual inspection of the stock and by ensuring that stores are kept in good order. 

If you are one of those ensembles that maintains inventory then Boundless helps you keep up with the above two major factors in inventory management. 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.

Ledgers: An Effective Way To Maintain All Business Transactions

Ledgers are books of accounts used for reporting economic transactions measured in monetary terms. Each financial transaction is noted inside a ledger. It depends on the size and structure of the organisation that the number of journal entries vary from hundreds to millions.

General ledger accounts are basically nothing but chart of accounts.

It helps in consolidating journal entries at a single place which are of same nature. Transfer of several journal entries in a single ledger account is termed as posting. For example, 100 entries of journal passed can be posted into a single sales account created. Post that, several sales transactions can be noted in that account date-wise.

Boundless helps you in doing this and maintaining ledgers all the while for your business.

Some important points that relate to ledger are:

1.  Each side of a journal entry is made on the same side of the ledger i.e. debit entry is made on the debit side while credit entry is made on the credit side.

2. Expenses and assets represent debit balance while income and liabilities represent credit balance including capital balance.

3. Debit balance in the statement represents amounts receivable while credit balance in the statement represents amounts payable. While amount receivables are noted in assets, amount payables are represented in liabilities.

4. While credit side represents income earned, debit side represents an organisation's expenses.

5. A cash book's debit balance means cash in hand.

6. Bank book's debit side is balance at bank and bank book's credit balance is bank overdraft.

7. However, real and personal account balances are represented in balance sheet and are carried onto next financial years.

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

Implementing 5s In Warehouses

Boundless is one company that helps in implementing 5s, the Japanese methodology built in 1970s.  

We implement 5s in varied workplaces for you and warehouse in one such place where 5s when executed bring beautiful results. 

                                     

Sort or Seiri - This phase in 5s sorts the workplace i.e. unwanted things are removed for making space. This way new things can be accommodated in warehouse and existing  things that need space can get storage. The phase helps you retain essential things only which are required. One also can set priorities using last-in-last-out method or first-in-first-out. Boundless helps you do just that.

Tools that might be required include:

     1. Red tags

     2. Equipment tags

Straighten or Seiton - The phase helps streamline the warehousing process and eliminates wastage. Boundless helps you with seiton in reducing wastage of time and resources.

Tools that might be required include:

      1. Warehouse signs

      2. Labels / inventory tags

      3. Floor identifiers / markers 

Shine or Seiso - In an effort to know where is efficiency lacks, the warehouse's shine is mandatory. Boundless helps recommend any spill or leak fixtures to prevent hazards. 

Tools that might be required include:

      1. Spill kits  

      2. Janitorial supplies

Standardise or Seiketsu - Boundless in order to bring efficiency, executes consistency. The standard procedures are well documented in terms of work manuals. Another way to standardise is to conduct regular training sessions where emergency management is taught. 

Tools that might be required include:

       1. Training manuals

       2. Work posters 

Sustain or shitsuke - It is human nature to roll back to older methods but it is quite important to hold on to new processes after all, 5s is striving towards continuous excellence rather than to get stuck with old rotten techniques. 

For more on 5s or warehousing services and related, call us at +91-11-66797769 or e-mail at info@boundlessindia.comor visit us at http://www.boundlessindia.com.

Offering The Best Warehousing Process Alternatives

Usually there are three kinds of warehouses

   •  High rack warehouses

      Offering a height of 50 metres, high rack warehouses provide maximum space utilisation. These kinds help store heavy and large volumes of goods. High rack warehouses can be further connected to a logistic centre's stations.  It should have essentials such as racks, delivery vehicles, stacker cranes and racking storage. It should have own control techniques that trigger effective material delivery.

  •  Small parts storage

    This kind of storage provides quick access to the goods stored. It enables high stock rotation. Through small parts storage, just in time production procedures are kept in place. The items in small parts storage are stored in small volume loading items like trays and plastic containers.  

     The storage aids in total space utilisation for a logistics centre and in ideal storage density. 

Centered around frequency of access of individual goods, the technique helps in multiple deep storage. The storage includes shuttle-systems, retrieval motor vehicles and racking storage. It also has a provision of electrical and mechanical maintenance.

     We at Boundless make a superb set of procedures that studies your small parts warehouses and do an extensive analysis of specific procedures. 

  •  Special warehouses

     Special kinds of storages includes load storages and coil storages.  A load storage creates space   for every kind of steel profile and individual components. And  in coil storages, the individual coils are packed so compactly that they offer a comprehensive solution. 

     Boundless provides customised solutions for above kinds of warehousing techniques. We provide alternate methods to improve your existing processes used in warehouses, so that you get the maximum benefit in terms of storage.

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