As a manufacturer, you’re no stranger to the challenges that come with growth and competition. From managing intricate production schedules to ensuring inventory accuracy, maintaining financial records, and fostering strong supplier relationships, the list of hurdles can seem endless.
Inventory management software (IMS) is the perfect solution for overcoming these hurdles.
But what is an IMS?
An IMS is a powerful tool that centralizes your inventory management, empowering you to track stock, process orders, collect inventory data, and forecast customer demand. Unlike manual inventory management methods, an IMS lets you track inventory in real-time and automate manual tasks.
Many solutions are available on the market today, ranging from basic software meant for overseeing simple tasks to more advanced IMS solutions designed to handle all the complexities of inventory management, including managing detailed production schedules, scaling across multiple locations, and integrating with accounting providers.
The remainder of this post explores how an advanced IMS solution like Fishbowl helps you streamline your manufacturing operations.
5 ways an IMS optimizes manufacturing
Whether you’re struggling to maintain accurate inventory levels, optimize production workflows, or improve your overall decision-making, an IMS can help. Here are 5 ways to use an IMS to optimize your manufacturing.
1. Real-time inventory tracking and management for enhanced accuracy, efficiency, and better decisions
Manual or inadequate inventory tracking can lead to errors, inaccurate inventory data, and production planning inefficiencies. These can result in stockouts, overstocking, production delays, unhappy customers, and lost profits.
An IMS provides real-time inventory tracking and management, reducing errors and maintaining accurate inventory data. Features such as barcoding, lot and serial number tracking, and automated data entry empower you to streamline your inventory processes while saving time and reducing labor costs.
For example, integrating barcode scanning technology with your IMS lets you use handheld scanners to efficiently capture and record inventory data without manual data input. This integration updates inventory levels and data in real-time.
Accurate inventory data, in turn, improves decision-making, enhances stock management, reduces waste, and boosts production planning. Combined with an IMS’s demand forecasting abilities, you can align production schedules with actual inventory and demand forecasts to produce and deliver items on time while avoiding stockouts or overproduction.
2. Comprehensive manufacturing and production management to handle complex production schedules
Managing complex production schedules can be challenging without proper tracking mechanisms. This makes it difficult to coordinate production processes, allocate resources, and maintain visibility into the production lifecycle.
Using an IMS, you can track work orders, bill of materials (BOM), and production stages to manage intricate production schedules, monitor job progress, and ensure all components are available when needed.
Consider the case of Oval Brand Fire Products, a once small and chaotic business that was struggling with inventory management and lacked insights into how its materials were being used. Implementing Fishbowl Manufacturing allowed them to establish a fully trackable system, gaining visibility into operations, improving resource management, and automating operations.
The team is now “able to watch it [materials] move through the manufacturing facility,” explains CFO & CIO Andy Rachmel. “So, at any point in time, we know what stage the product is at and how many parts and pieces we have on hand.”
They can also quickly identify bottlenecks, such as material shortages, that would delay production and take corrective action to improve manufacturing, such as expediting orders for critical materials.
3. Seamless integration with accounting for improved financial reporting
Discrepancies between inventory and financial records often arise due to manual data entry errors and a lack of integration between inventory management systems and accounting software.
A robust IMS integrates seamlessly with accounting software for enhanced financial accuracy. For instance, Fishbowl integrates with the popular accounting software, QuickBooks, ensuring financial data and inventory information are always in sync. This connection lets you automatically link labor time and consumed materials’ cost to the cost of finished goods to record any financial data related to production costs accurately and without error.
It also helps you generate work-in-progress (WIP) reports for detailed production quantities, providing a more complete view of manufacturing’s impact on cash flow and tax. These capabilities inform business decisions, streamline administrative tasks, and improve financial reporting.
4. Scalability and customization that supports your growth
Growth is usually accompanied by expanding operations into multiple facilities to meet increasing demand. But this brings challenges that can hinder growth and operational efficiency, including:
- Increased inventory management complexity that makes it hard to maintain accurate stock levels to meet demand
- Resource allocation challenges around materials, labor, and equipment that lead to bottlenecks and production delays
- Difficulties in maintaining visibility and control across your manufacturing operations, which makes it hard to pinpoint issues and optimize operations in the first place
An advanced IMS like Fishbowl is not just a tool, it’s a partner in your business growth. It is scalable and designed to support your expansion and adapt to your changing business needs. It offers flexible solutions you can customize to suit your needs, whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise. These include:
- Multi-site inventory management for maintaining successful inventory management and visibility across all your warehouse and manufacturing facilities
- Advanced reporting and analytics with customizable reporting tools to analyze crucial metrics like production efficiency and inventory turnover rates to improve decisions and resource allocation
- ERP system integration for large manufacturers for better data synchronization across departments
- Customizable workflows that adapt to your evolving needs, from configuring manufacturing stages to automating reorder points based on demand forecasts
5. Improved supply chain management that reduces costs and helps build supplier relationships
Inefficient supply chains can lead to excess inventory, delayed deliveries, strained customer relationships, and increased costs.
For example, suppose you’re a manufacturer that has historically struggled due to an unreliable supplier with unpredictable lead times. Chances are you’ve had to order more raw materials than needed to compensate for delays, which leads to stockpiling and high carrying costs.
With the right platform, you can optimize your supply chain operations by more effectively managing suppliers, purchase orders, and shipments. For instance, the software provides tools to:
- Track and evaluate supplier performance according to key metrics, such as delivery reliability, lead time adherence, and quality consistency
- Manage lead times better by understanding average lead times and forecasting future lead times based on historical data
- Automate the creation and processing of purchase orders based on reorder points
- Analyze procurement costs, such as purchase price variance, transportation, and inventory carrying costs, to identify cost savings opportunities and better control manufacturing expenses