Inventory management is an important element of tracking your products throughout the supply chain, from manufacturing to warehousing and to the point that it arrives with your customers. Inventory management helps to make sure your products are in the right place at the right time. Having visibility of your inventory is essential in order to accurately predict how much to order, when to order and how to store your stock.
What are the different types of inventory management?
There are various different types of inventory management depending on the types of business requirements needed to manage stock. These needs will be unique to each business. Some of the different types of inventory management include:
- Periodic Inventory Management: Periodic Inventory management is when a physical stock count is performed at specific intervals. This could be quarterly or monthly. Generally, Periodic inventory management is best suited to industries such as construction or furniture as these types of products have a long shelf life and are generally stored in low-volume.
- Barcode Inventory Management: Barcode inventory management is when each product is assigned its own SKU or barcode. The barcode can hold additional product information such as the colour, dimensions and weight. You can also find out important information like general stock levels from scanning the barcode. Barcode inventory is best used for stock that has a high volume of products that move quickly through the supply chain like retail or healthcare products.
- Just-in-time Inventory Management: Just in time or JIT inventory management is the practice of ordering just enough inventory items, only when they’re needed. This type of inventory management is best used for large items and for products with a short shelf life like food or healthcare products.
What are the benefits of choosing the right inventory management solution?
Choosing the right inventory management system for your business is a key part of ensuring your supply chain moves along smoothly and your products arrive with your customers in a timely manner.
Some of the key benefits of choosing the right inventory management solution for your business include:
- Inventory accuracy: Understanding your stock levels and being aware of how inventory moves through your business reduces the risk of selling out of popular products or overstocking the wrong products.
- Increased efficiency: By having a solid inventory management system in place, your business can focus its attention on critical tasks and become more efficient.
- Cost savings: By managing stock levels effectively you can prevent ordering excess products. This is especially important with perishable goods like food.
- Better decision making: By accessing real-time data on stock levels, you can make more informed decisions when it comes to purchasing new stock, providing sales data and producing new stock.
How can Lesters Logistics help?
Here at Lesters Logistics, we provide our customers with a customised end to end warehousing service designed to suit your business needs. With years of experience we’re able to manage a complete logistics solution including both warehousing and transport. To find out more about how we can help you contact our helpful team today.
