Due to rising global competition and increasing demands from customers, businesses that deal with discrete items or inventory, are constantly seeking better ways to manage their inventory. Common challenges that they deal with include the following:

• working capital tied up in inventory
• delivery fulfilment at the rate that the customer expects
• optimal storage of inventory with the lowest cost of real estate, infrastructure, labour and utility costs
• churn of inventory at the best possible rate to reduce losses from inventory aging

A few common themes that benefit businesses in their business management solutions are automation, reducing or eliminating manual processes (and the associated risk of human error), and time and cost savings.

These apply across the entire business spectrum, but it’s perhaps most effective when they come together to improve the management and distribution of inventory, because this can have the greatest impact on the relationships with customers and vendors.

Companies have long since relied on their inventory management software for establishing and maintaining an effective supply chain in increasingly demanding market conditions. Improving the capabilities of warehouse management for the mobile workforce is now the next important step in business operations for many enterprises.

Customer inventory challenges

• Manual updates of inventory movement increases the possibility of human error

• Inaccurate Inventory On Hand status report makes it difficult to make and keep promises to customers and also causes issues with warehouse waste and storage

• Stock taking process is time and resource heavy and do not offer reliable results

How can a mobile warehouse solution support businesses?

Search

The search function allows warehouse staff to search product details and inventory information such as In Stock Quantity, and available Batch and Serial Numbers – providing accurate and timely information for customers.

Receiving and put-away

A Goods Receipt Purchase Order (PO) is generated when the warehouse receives and enters the product into the system – this is all done by scanning the barcode into the mobile app and the related Batch or Serial Number can also be scanned and synchronised into the inventory management software or fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.

Delivery

Scanning the product enables the validation between the picked item barcode against the Sales Order Product Barcode from the inventory management system, which ensures the warehouse picks the correct product before shipping.

Urgent deliveries

For urgent orders without a Sales Order, warehouse staff can perform a fulfilment and synchronise the details into the inventory management system.

Inventory transfer

Stock might need to be moved internally within the warehouse or between various locations – by scanning the item barcode during any stock movement, the transaction is stored and synchronised in the inventory management system in real time.

Stock take

By reducing the need for manual input, the stock take is performed by scanning the item barcode, any batch/serial number and the counted quantity.

What are the business benefits of mobile warehouse management?

• Reduce human involvement
  by providing barcode scanning solutions, you can use fewer people to complete a more efficient process, and also eliminate the risk of manual input error

• Accurate data
  by syncing data between your mobile warehouse management and SAP application you can always rely on accurate and timely data – an important element for businesses when trying to meet customer demands

• Real time inventory
  knowing how much inventory you have, and where, enables quick and reliable decisions to be made when trying to establish efficient purchasing, storage and wastage processes

• Effective stock take process
  reducing human involvement in the stock take process produces more reliable results with less risk of manual input and error

• Cost and time saving
  vital for any business, reducing time and money spent on processes that can be easily automated (and run better) helps redirect precious resources to more customer-centric activities

If you’re not currently employing a mobile warehouse management system, it’s time you explored this business-changing enhancement to your operations.

Image Credit: Photo by maique madeira on Unsplash

A version of this post has been published in my blog.