Webinar: Excellence in Inventory management with Crave InfoTech’s warehouse automation

So make sure to mark your calendar for, what could turn out to be, a path-defining webinar for your company.

Here’s more context and alignment about the Inventory Management and how Crave InfoTech can help automate the same.

Inventory management is the intelligence center of the supply chain. The managers must know what stocks are in their warehouses, stores, or on en-route. The inventory levels give them the assurance of the turnaround and lead time for sales requests, plant spare parts requisitions, and stock replenishment cycles.

Also, having a smart inventory management system allows the managers to sustain optimal stock levels to keep holding costs at the minimum while still ensuring that the supply chain is agile and responsive to ship out the required item at the right time.

Crave InfoTech’s Inventory Management and Warehouse Management solution (cWarehouse) streamlines, digitizes, and automates all these processes from unloading, sorting, put away, bin to bin transfer, cycle counting, pick up, packaging and shipping.

This imparts all-round control, visibility, and agility to the inventory management and warehouse operations. Let’s look at some of the ways that our cWarehouse can improve warehouse processes.

Crave InfoTech is a key partner with SAP and Zebra Technologies. This gives us a fair advantage to offer end-to-end warehouse solutions including platform intelligence, Internet of Things (automation), and streamlined apps. This means that the solution would be scalable, easily adoptable, smart, and future proof.

Crave can offer RFID and barcode enablement for the clients. This forms the crux for a lot of automation where the user simply scans an item to capture its details. This makes the processes fully digital and fast. It cuts down time and boosts precision. We also are equipped to provide portable printers that can print labels on the go with the RFID/barcode info. You will see many points in this article where RFID/barcode scanning comes in as a critical feature for data capture.

Warehouse handlers unload trucks and sort the incoming stock. Crave InfoTech’s app streamlines this process. The user just has to follow the guided Workflow in the app.

They can create ‘handling units’ in the system (package holding items) right on the spot. This cuts down on parallel and manual work. The users can print relevant labels for these handling units by clicking a single button in the app. The label has a QR or barcode.

The users then scan the individual items as they pack them in the handling unit. This process links (pairs) the items to the handling unit. Later, these users can simply scan the label of the unit to know about all the items it holds.

They then take the handling unit to the desired bin. The bin has a label with a code. They scan the bin code and the unit code to pair them in the system. So, now when the user scans the bin later, the app would show them all the handling units in the bin, and all the items in the handling unit – complete info in one scan.

This process shows how Crave InfoTech ensures perfect data capture and synchronicity for the put-away process in a smart inventory management system.

Once the put away is completed using the Crave app, the manager would have exact visibility of each item in the inventory. They would know the exact bin location of each item for easy pick-up, counting, and shipping.

This complete visibility of held inventory improves the Available to Promise function within the warehouse. Available to Promise is essentially establishing the lead time for the supply of any part or item in response to a sales request. In simple terms, it’s an inventory check to know if the item is available (and if it’s not, what would be its next available date) to give a precise lead time to the requester. This helps streamline procurement for plants and manage distribution channels.

This complete visibility of held inventory improves the Available to Promise function within the warehouse. Available to Promise is essentially establishing the lead time for the supply of any part or item in response to a sales request. In simple terms, it’s an inventory check to know if the item is available (and if it’s not, what would be its next available date) to give a precise lead time to the requester. This helps streamline procurement for plants and manage distribution channels.

The user just follows the path to the exact bin location as shown in the app.

Click on ‘search’ and the app will find the item: However, if there is a challenge and they can’t find the location – the app has a ‘search’ feature that guides the user to the item. They just have to select the item in the app and click on ‘search’. The app would guide them with a series of beeps (like a metal detector) to the exact location of the item.

Once at the destination, they can scan the bin. This will give them the list of all items in that bin. They can pick the required item, unpair it from the original bin, and take it to the new bin. Here they again pair the item with the new bin to finish the process.

If the item is in the handling unit, they can follow a process in the app of ‘unpacking’ of the handling unit. This unpairs the old unit from the item. They can then create a new handling unit in the system and pair it with the required item (to put it away in a new location).

Cycle counting: Inventory cycle counting is a very important part of warehouse management. This gives the managers the current stock levels. This is a regular and timely exercise within the warehouse. However, when done manually it takes a lot of time. This time is detrimental to the overall supply chain. If the managers get delayed info about the stock levels, their decision making would also be delayed.

Here, the Crave app plays a very important and efficient role. The users can follow a simple process in the app to quickly conduct cycle counting of the entire stock or of select product categories.

Bulk-scan and multi-scan for counting: The users can simply bulk-scan by swiping the scanner over multiple items. This would instantly scan them into the system. This saves a lot of time and has high accuracy.

They can swipe over a bin (holding multiple items). This would scan the bin and show the list of items in it (as per record). It has also scanned the actual items in that single swipe. So, in the system it would show a list of on-record items and also highlight the missing items (any discrepancy). All this inventory counting is done in a minute.

Just like the bulk-scan, the multi-scan is a feature which allows the user to know all the ‘categories’ of products and their count in a single swipe. The user would see an exact count as per each category held in the destination area.

In-and-out inventory counting: There’s a lot of inventory moving on forklifts or dollies in a warehouse. They move from one room (area) to another. The managers can install stationary scanners at strategic points (like entry and exits). This would auto-count the inventory as it moves through them. Just like bulk-scan, it would also show the missing items for a complete set (like an order or bin).

The app also helps with easy picking and packaging of items for shipping out. The user knows the exact point of pick-up (in the bin). They scan the handling unit and unpair it with the item. They then move the item to the packing station for shipping. All info is captured instantly into the system.

All these processes help bring down the dependence on manual intervention and paper use. This improves the sustainability factor for the client. It also reduces the overall resource and time costs for warehouse management. As a primary function, it boosts the efficiency, visibility, and control within the warehouse.

Do not miss this opportunity to modernize your operations with the help of Crave InfoTech