Inventory management is often considered the single most challenging aspect of any business. Businesses with poor inventory control generally experience costly warehousing fees, slow-moving items in stock, as well as product shortages, chaotic or congested warehouse floors, shipment delays, excess wastage, pricing errors and much more.
Assessing the costs that a lack of inventory and a surplus of inventory can cause is crucial to the successful running of your business, after all, both can severely impact your bottom line. No one wants to be doing overtime during the festive season to try and catch up with missed orders. This is where APS software comes in.
What are the causes of stock shortages?
There are multiple causes of product shortages that APS software can help overcome.
Inaccurate inventory data
Shipment variances, misplaced products, returns, or stolen goods are all common occurrences that can lead to inaccurate inventory data. Typically the problem lies in either human error or technical issues. This is especially true when places are understaffed. It’s also easy to put the wrong data into a computerised system, so training should be a high priority.
Technical problems can also cause disparities between one item count and another. Most warehouses and distribution centres rely on computerised inventory management systems, but when those systems have technical issues, such as data centre downtime, or there’s a syncing problem, discrepancies in item counts can occur.
Inaccurate forecasting
If your business is using inaccurate reports or outdated information to predict demand, then it’s likely that there will be stock shortages, and overtime will have to occur to attempt to fix the issue. If the inventory data is inaccurate, then you won’t know where things are, how much is in stock, and how much is expected to be sold. Fortunately, inventory management software can help your business track all its inventory, even if you store items across multiple locations.
Poor material management
Often the availability of materials is crucial to ensuring a well-stocked business. Imagine releasing a schedule to production and then discovering that you don’t have the necessary materials available minutes before you were to transition production!
With an APS solution, you can guarantee that all the material required will be available before the scheduled production is due to start (providing the source of data is correct). At the same time, the greater precision of production start times allows you to order materials to arrive just in time, minimizing your purchased material inventory. This then leads to the possibility of better agreements with suppliers, cost reduction and better cash flow.
How can APS software help?
Advanced Planning and Scheduling (APS) systems are manufacturing management software programs that simultaneously plan and schedule production based on available materials, labour and enterprise capacity.
There are four primary components of APS systems:
- Production planning.
- Production scheduling.
- Distribution planning.
- Transportation planning.
With this broad scope, APS can realistically simulate production and distribution throughout so more thorough and feasible plans can be executed.
What can APS software do for me?
When used to its fullest extent, APS software has the ability to:
- Improve delivery times.
- Reduce costs.
- Optimise inventory levels.
- Eliminate the need for overtime.
- Deliver accurate lead times and stock levels.
- Improve customer service.
What are the benefits of APS software for your business?
- 15-20% improvement in productivity, allowing you to get more from what you already have.
- 40-50% reduction in raw materials.
- 40-50% reduction in make-span time, reducing WIP that slows down production flow.
- 50-90% improvement in customer service, especially through an increase in on-time deliveries.
These benefits can provide a ROI in months or just a few weeks.
Choosing the right management software
Opcenter APS is a family of production planning and scheduling software products that improve the synchronisation of your manufacturing processes, giving you greater visibility and control to increase utilisation and on-time delivery, while reducing inventory levels and waste. Opcenter APS is a highly customisable capacity planning and scheduling package.
Kudos Solutions implementations of Opcenter APS products are designed to work alongside and facilitate, rather than replace existing systems. Opcenter APS has been successfully integrated with many major ERP systems including SAP, BPCA, AS400 plus many bespoke and in-house programmed systems running on platforms such as MS Access, MS Excel, and SQL Server.
Want to implement planning and scheduling software that will benefit your business this festive season? Contact us today.