While a good tree cannot bear bad fruit, that same fruit is still susceptible to an expiration date. The same thing is true of countless other ingredients involved in a company’s food production or distribution business.
Luckily, food inventory software helps keep a fresh production line rolling. It does this by offering the following features to help you avoid problems that can plague food and beverage companies, if they are not careful to watch out for them.
Inventory
Whether dealing with a single storeroom, or multiple locations across several states, you can see that your ability to remain up to date with your stock levels is critical to uninterrupted production. You do not want to keep too many food items in stock because, as mentioned above, doing that means you run the risk of them going bad before they can be put to use or sold. However, the flip side is also a big problem because you can experience serious delays and other unfortunate situations if you have too few items on hand. To further maximize your use of inventory, consider the following inventory management tools and methods:
- Track item rotation and eliminate material waste by cycling through your inventory on a frequent basis
- Use mobile barcoding devices to figure out the exact volumes and locations of all of your ingredients
- Make use of inventory software to monitor vendor prices and histories to ensure you are getting the best deal possible
Processes
A cake doesn’t make itself, just as a collection of materials does not guarantee the quality of a finished product. Baking is a process, and you need to make sure you and your employees get it right consistently, in order to keep your customers happy. A desirable end result is a matter of processes, whether on the production floor or within the confines of a business office. Consider the processes that can yield the highest returns, such as:
- Incorporate inventory tracking to reduce manual inventory audits by keeping inventory records accurate
- Utilize your inventory software to transform sales orders directly into work orders to save time and speed up production
- Harness custom reports to monitor production efficiency and make adjustments to improve further
Schedule
To find success in the marketplace you must plan for it and then act accordingly. Your schedule should serve as a framework to generate business, track current orders, plan ahead for future trends in demand, and keep production humming along. By incorporating food inventory software, your manufacturing schedule can be streamlined to a central hub of information, providing key data, such as:
- Production completion estimates with current tracking of all labor and part costs involved
- Upcoming equipment maintenance and repairs to avoid unnecessary downtime
- Assigned users per work order and stage completion to encourage accountability
Your good fruits are ready to be received by your customers, so deliver your most cost-effective products with the extra boost of food inventory software.