Whether you are consulting with material management services or devising your strategy for inventory management, here are some benefits of having a robust system to manage materials. Of course, your company must support this strategy with Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software solutions for maximum benefit.

Evaluation of Materials

With the assistance of software, purchasing decisions become much more straightforward! Material management software can calculate the overall costs of acquiring the material for sale. These costs include direct material costs, freight costs, and import duties.

With this data at your disposal, your business can make prudent and better-purchasing decisions!

Efficient Bin Management

Among the most important reasons you need software to support business operations is efficiently managing your inventory bins. Businesses can store incoming inventory in the preferred bins in the rack system. Then, when the order fulfilment process begins, inventory and stock can be easily located from the bins. Additionally, your business will receive automated alerts indicating when inventory levels become low.

Efficiently managing your bin is important for two other reasons. First, for inventory control and management, an organized inventory bin will reduce storage costs as businesses know the amount of current stock.

Secondly, managing your inventory bin efficiently results in a faster order-execution process. This benefits your customers and clients immensely as they will receive their products faster. As a result, customers and clients have an excellent reason to use your services again.

Lot/Serial No. Traceability

ERP software can help track inventory, spare parts, and even machinery needed for production. Each unit will have a lot or serial number, meaning businesses can trace these units as they move from purchase to the final location.

Additionally, a secure record of each transaction can be saved and retrieved for sales and returns. This transaction history is also vital for locating the source of problems with inventory or stock.

Product Life Cycle Management

As mentioned earlier, purchasing new stock is vital for business operations. However, purchasing new stock without analyzing whether the products will sell can negatively affect your bottom line. Essentially, material managers should examine which products are in demand and which are no longer desired by customers.

ERP software can assist with demand forecasting using sales records from previous seasons. This is important to prevent purchasing too much stock/too little stock, which can harm your company’s bottom line.

Inventory Management

Inventory management is closely related to product life cycle management, which focuses on the procurement and replenishment of new stock. With ERP software, you can set differentiated re-order points for individual products. ERP software also provides a range of replenishment planning strategies – such as economic order quantity – that further streamline production and procurement processes.

Effortless Scheduling

With the aid of ERP software, planning the procurement of materials and subsequent production schedules has never been easier! In addition, as the entire ERP system is integrated, and because all employees have mobile access to it, controlling the production schedule and updating employees of significant changes is a simple process!

Additionally, should machinery need to be serviced or spare parts need to be installed, this maintenance work can be scheduled with the aid of software quickly and with the least hassle to the production process.

Multi-Location Inventory

As your business or company expands, so will your office and warehouse locations. When office, manufacturing, and warehousing units are in different locations or sites, coordination between employees can become a bit tricky. With the aid of ERP software, however, these coordination problems melt away.

ERP enables you to track progress in manufacturing units from your office; additionally, as inventory is being moved between different locations, inventory levels and details will be updated in real-time to reflect these changes.