INVENTORY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Inventory Management System



Inventory Management System

Introduction

Inventory system is an effective way for monitoring and tracking different materials that are transferred in and out of a company's warehouse or establishment usually for accounting purposes. It is also important for a company to monitor all the transactions and movement of goods in order to keep an account of all their stocks (Hildreth, 2005). However in some establishments, the inventory of materials is done manually in such a way that an employee writes down the information of different materials every time it is transferred in and out of the room. The same case applies in Bell Electronics Corporation; and as a result, the inventory system becomes prone to human error and would be more time consuming which will most likely be a loss for the company.

Discussion

In the clothing business scenario as mentioned in the case study, there is a corresponding form for every incoming or outgoing item (from the stock room). These forms serve as the basis of comparison when inspecting; that is, the amount of item that goes in or out must tally with those written in the forms. Afterwards, all the transactions will then be encoded manually in Microsoft Excel for future reference. In addition to the complexity of the process, the employee responsible on this task also needs to check the stocks once in a while so as to monitor which items are already getting below the allowable minimum quantity. Because of the draining work, there were circumstances when the inventory record in the computer does not tally with the actual amount of the available items. Another thing to consider in manual inventory is prone to errors since it is inevitable that the employee assigned to do the inventory would commit mistakes. Due to the inefficiency of manual inventory, security is also being risked. If not properly monitored, theft and loss of items can actually take place (DeMarco, 2005). It is also time consuming to take note of several details each time an item is brought in and out of the stock room.

Since manual inventory consumes a lot of time and is susceptible to errors, it would be helpful to build a system that will automate the transactions from acquisition of the product description to updating the inventory database. Work efficiency of employees is defined as how productive they are in their work. The automated inventory system will improve employees' work efficiency by automating routinely and time consuming tasks such as the time spent in taking down product information. As a result, the time can be used in more productive activities. Accuracy is defined as the correctness of accessing information. The accuracy of the current system will also be improved, since the automated inventory system would eliminate the need of constantly encoding lengthy details of products by having an inventory database. In today's business environment, it is almost vital that businesses switch to an automated system for inventory management because manual inventory can lead to a number ...