Hi all, Recently I've been tasked with the job of maintaining our inventory but honestly, outside of doing a manual check, I really don't know where to start for managing all the paper and finishing materials we keep in house and how best to update that information in real time with material used and ordered on any given day. I was hoping that some of you out there might impart some of your wisdom on me and give me some ideas on how to best manage our inventory, be it through software, leg work, or both based on your experiences. Any advice would be appreciated. TM
Good question as your in charge of "money on the floor". Our paper is managed by a computer software program designed specifically for our type of printing, business forms, it keeps track of roll weights, when it shows a negative balance thats when ordering takes place. On other items we have established a reorder point, trying to turn inventory every 30 days, but in some cases you need to carry more to get a better deal. Hope this helps.
Any advice is always helpful . I suppose I should also have provided a little more information in retrospect. We're a digital printer, we don't run on anything larger than 13x19 sheets, though we do keep some larger stock in house to cut down if we need it. We generally keep certain stocks in house at all times. We do a lot in house, book binding, wire punching, die cutting, laminating, drilling...generally we do most everything in house unless it's requested to be done litho, it's an extremely large run, or simply the sheet size is too large, or an extremely specialized type of printing, such as embossing or thermal, which has led to an increasing amount of non-paper products. You mentioned software that was specifically designed for your type of printing. Did you commission the software to be created or did you buy it ? What software is it if you don't mind me asking ? You also mentioned that when it hit's a "negative balance" you then reorder. That "negative balance" is that a "min stock level" that you mean. So, just as an example, let's say you want to have a min 1/2 a box of any given stock, when it drops below that, that's when it get's ordered ? Is that what you mean ? How does the software know that's it's below ? Does the pressman (or someone) input how much stock is being used for the job and it's subtracted from the total ? Do you use some sort of scanner (this is something I'm thinking about) ? I'm a little overwhelmed with this particular task as no one has ever done it here and I'm starting completely from scratch and no one here really seems to have an idea of how to do it properly, but they left it in my hands...suckers ! We were a small company but over the past year, we have exploded and are trying to deal with the growth as best as possible. Thanks again
Why not make a simple excel spreadsheet and have the IOH, Projected Usage and Actual Usage numbers to allow for a quick review of what you have, what is needed and when to order, and also to see what the dollar value of IOH is? Inital inventory is required then a followup every 6 weeks or so to compare your numbers.
We bought the software and it was tailored for this operation, its so old it was made in Dos and I would not recommend them for anyone anyway. BFE out of Texas. Because of the volume we do, you can be looking right at a roll of paper, but because jobs are in process and have not been printed yet, that roll is really not there, thats what I mean by negative balance. The software establishes the usage estimated, the warehouse records actual which leaves the correct balance. I agree with the above post, I think for the time being with what you want to do Excel will do a nice job. Just start one piece at a time and build from there.
Well, thank you all very much for the advice and knowledge. Looks like we're going with the manual checks and lists...this is going to get daunting lol
