Membership Inquiry – Inventory Management Systems

[Michelle Holden]

[Michelle Holden]

Originally Posted July 4, 2018

BWA Manufacturing Member is asking for your advice on Inventory Management Systems.

This member works with reclaimed wood and building components and has an extensive stock of lumber material. Currently, they do not track inventory electronically. When a customer places an order, they do a visual search for the lumber material in their supply area. The lumber material is coming in faster than it can be sort and put away which is exacerbating the issue.

It’s time to implement an inventory management system, and this member is looking for advice/experience from the BWA membership.

Any recommendations or advice is welcome; please add your comments in the window below.
Login is required. If you are having trouble logging in to the members only area, please email: admin@bluewaterwoodalliance.com

[Michelle Holden]

1. Member Reply: Computers (software) don’t solve the problems, but all to often we are looking to MRP, ERP or some other solution. If you can’t devise a manual way to track and store it, the software will just make the problem worse. Not to mention your software provider will promise you the world. However, without proving a system manually it will be difficult to understand what you need.

I would recommend trying a simple manual Kanban for the inventory. Once you have that sorted out, it may eliminate the need for expensive software.

2. Member Reply: We work with Microsoft OneNote to create a customer’s job

The material arrives here and there is a packing slip, it has a place and should match the material needed for the job

**the material in our shop is all owned by our customers

If material is leftover from customer’s jobs and they would like us to hold it here for future jobs, we then create an excel spreadsheet for what material it is and the size of the sheet

We work in a small customer base so we don’t have a specific “inventory management system”

Thank you

3. Member Reply: We work with Microsoft OneNote to create a customer’s job

The material arrives here and there is a packing slip, it has a place and should match the material needed for the job

**the material in our shop is all owned by our customers

If material is leftover from customer’s jobs and they would like us to hold it here for future jobs, we then create an excel spreadsheet for what material it is and the size of the sheet

We work in a small customer base so we don’t have a specific “inventory management system”

Thank you

4. Member Reply: Our company uses the advanced inventory module in Quickbooks Enterprise.
It works well for our needs as we can closely keep track of raw materials and also build assembly’s (which is a big part of our inventory management).

I believe there are many different programs available to manage inventory and some of them very expensive.
If your member already uses a QuickBooks subscription, this ‘advanced inventory’ module may be a good option for them.

I hope this helps.

5.Member Reply: For what it’s worth because it’s not an ERP, I would tag each board and take a picture and then have a simple ecommerce site where customers can pick and pay for their wood online. It’s manual but about the same amount of input work as ERP with the added benefit of ecommerce.

If they need someone good to set it up, the best person I know is here: http://sitaran.com

[Author]

Posts