Controlling your inventory uses the optimal acquisition, disposition and care of all material that is required in a retailing or manufacturing process. There are three types of inventory that arise concern in any business and those are work-in-process, finished goods and raw material.
What is So Important About Controlling Your Inventory?
- Helps to maintain your stock in line with sales trends or market demand.
- Reduces the costs of holding and carrying.
- Improves the rates of stock turnover
- Builds the reputation of your business for always having the correct amount of merchandise that is high in demand.
Gaining control over your inventory isn’t a difficult task. Following, there is a process consisting of 5 steps that will help you to find control over this potential problem.
Plan Your Inventory
Typically, to control your inventory it requires you to have some beforehand planning. Organize out the transportation of work-in-progress and new goods depending on how you thought out the schedule. f possible, the new goods should be brought out onto the shelves just as the old ones are being sold through, however this isn’t very practical, nor risk free. Therefore, you will need to make sure that you aren’t holding many months of stock on your shelves, and you aren’t running a business with empty shelves. An optimal order capacity will minimize the total in variable costs that is required to hold your entire inventory. Some software programs like the ones from advanced manufacturing software can help your track all of this information better.
Establish Your Cycles of Orders
If you are able to predict what the demand is for your products, then you can establish a pattern of regular ordering. Make sure you think about the costs when you are preparing your order, the economic cost, and the aggregate shipping price when you are producing a cycle for your ordering. This will allow you to minimize the costs. Take some time to produce a system that is custom made for the needs of your business.
Balance Your Levels Of Stock
The incompetent management of your inventory could quickly but a burden onto your profits. Think about budget and market related issues when you are determining what would be the idea levels of stock for your business. Enhancing your inventory so it doesn’t end up with an excessive amount of carrying costs, yet will satisfy the demand from the market, is a great skill.
Evaluate The Merchandise
Maintaining your inventory up to date and steering clear of superseded merchandise is another dire aspect of keeping inventory under control. Remember, stock that is outdated is clearly just dead investment. This is generally important with seasonal or fashion merchandise. It is a lot better to make a note of the merchandise that is not selling well, than hold it in your system.
Control and Follow-Up The Inventory
Take action when checking the numbers and searching the items those are in your store. This will help you to make right decisions about the replacement, discontinuance, or disposal of the different elements. Keep in mind that the demand in the market for a lot of products can alter very rapidly and fast corrections might need to be made.
Just remember, that the effective control of inventory will play a very important role in the efficient and smooth flow of your business or organization. A lot of times, software for inventory control can help you further this process.
Author bio:
This article, written by Camia Sidle, introduces the benefits and how important it is to keep control over your businesses inventory and stock. Through much research, advanced manufacturing software has become one of the leading software manufacturers that can help your business get back up and running smoothly with help from their inventory control software.