Inventory Management Software

The ultimate value of inventory management software is directly related to the integrity of the data entered into the system. If the physical goods in the warehouse do not sync with the digital information, get ready to grit your teeth. Effective inventory management is more than just blips on a screen ... it's how those blips relate to what's actually sitting on the pallets. My experience this weekend is a case in point ...

Saturday was the big day to start our latest home improvement project. The preparation work was done early in the day. With the air conditioner cranking in the battle wagon, I headed off to the store for supplies just before lunch.

It may have only been early June, but it was a typically sticky Joisey summer day ... hot and humid.

Why am I reduced to babbling about the environmental conditions in a piece about inventory management?

Ahhh, grasshopper ... it will soon be revealed ...

The salesman had my order written up minutes after I arrived at the store. With the exact dimensions, we determined how many boxes I'd need to complete the first phase of my project. The salesman checked the store's inventory management system to make sure that the product was in stock. When he didn't find what he was looking for in the system, he made a phone call to a higher-up and was assured that the product was indeed in the warehouse. So he wrote up the order, I forked over the funds, and he sent me off to the loading dock.

I was met at the door by the warehouse guy, a pleasant, soft-spoken fellow. He took a look at the receipt and headed into the depths of the warehouse to look for the product.

After just a few minutes of searching the warehouse, it became apparent that the store had yet to implement advanced inventory tracking software. Forget bar codes. Never mind the RFID tags. It was clear that they weren't following the path I laid out back in September:

A comprehensive inventory management system will follow the path as products are received, stored, inventoried, picked, packed, and shipped. When you implement inventory tracking software, data is collected and stored at every step of the way.

Not this day.

Did I mention how hot it was? The warehouse was on a slow broil. Fifteen minutes of crawling around and on top of stacks of palettes bore no fruit. The salesman soon came out to the warehouse. He apologized for the confusion, remarking that the store's inventory management system had its shortcomings.

I nodded my head in agreement, as I pondered how much better things could be with a serious warehouse system with RFID tags.

Just when it seemed like we were going to come up dry, the warehouse guy struck pay dirt. It took more than half an hour of exhaustive searching. The product was buried three rows deep on a palette nearly twenty feet up in the air. It took an intense round of forklift jockeying to unearth our treasure. We loaded eight cartons of flooring and two rolls of underlayment into the back of wagon and I was finally on my way ...