Our company operates sorting facilities at many of its distribution sites. These facilities are largely maintained and serviced in-house. To enable immediate repairs in this time-sensitive environment, we maintain both central and decentralized spare parts warehouses. The responsible department currently does not use standardized inventory management software at the branch offices. Inventory, which mainly consists of equipment without serial numbers and spare parts, is managed using tools such as Excel spreadsheets. We are looking for software that supports inventory management and, for example, automatically updates inventory levels based on incoming and outgoing goods.
As a pilot project, we are seeking inventory management software for one of our German locations.
Software requirements:
- Inventory levels should be displayed across all branches
- Exchange of inventory between branches
- Interface with Oracle
- Ordering and billing should be possible via Oracle, with data exchange through this interface
- Quick and easy on-site handling is an essential requirement
- Clear display of available stock, including cross-location in real time
- Expandable across Europe (optional: multilingual, multi-currency, mapping of the corporate structure: warehouse location -> storage location -> site -> entity -> country, additional localizations
- Simple standardization of items (few required fields), ideally importing item data from existing e-procurement catalog systems
- Standard reporting of inventory levels
- Ability to use the software via smartphone/mobile
- Multi-warehouse capable
The following inventory-affecting transactions must be supported:
Inventory receipts
- Definition of opening inventory
- Updating inventory via purchase orders and goods receipts
- Inventory receipt as an inventory variance
- Inventory receipt due to returned goods (if applicable, various categories: defective, (no) demand, replacement unit, or consignment goods, etc.)
- Upon reaching a predefined minimum stock level => automatic triggering of a purchase order (emergency case)
Stock Outflows
- Material consumption posting – categorization using various posting keys (scrap, repair, project, …)
- Stock outflow as an inventory variance
- Transfer postings between branches and locations
Location structure as an organizational element in inventory management:
- Differentiation of total stock by location (material stock)
- Transfer postings between branches
- Addition of a storage location structure: The inventory of a material can be located at n storage locations within a site
- Addition of a storage bin structure: The inventory of a material can be located at n storage bins within a storage location
- Depending on the site, site inventory, storage location inventory, or storage bin inventory should be defined for inventory management
- Transfer transactions between storage locations or between storage bins
- Inbound and outbound movements at the storage location or storage bin level
Optionally, the software should be expandable to include a maintenance module. Initially, 10–15 software workstations are planned for the first warehouse in Germany (pilot project), followed by potentially many more warehouses in the EU with approximately 50–80 software workstations (1–3 users per storage location planned).