Factory and plant supervisors who are responsible for moving product down the line to warehousing and then through the distribution chain require an accurate way to identify both products and routes, which is very difficult to do manually.
Sage 100 ERP’s bar coding system, however, can help.
The use of bar codes dates all the way back to the railroad industry, where it was used to track individual rail cars. Today, of course, bar coding is used in almost every industry because it speeds up processes, ensures accuracy, and increases efficiency, particularly in manufacturing and distribution companies.
When inventory arrives on your doorstep, you need to do the following things: scan the purchase order number, scan the items, do a count, and scan a specific lot or serial number. The faster – and more accurately – you can do these things, the better. Enter the bar codes. Scanning, versus keying in, the information speeds up the process while eliminating errors such as entering incorrect product numbers or entering duplicate orders. In addition to the confusion such errors create, they can also create unsatisfied customers.
Manually, this work is often done using documents in Word, spreadsheets in Excel, or email threads in Outlook. The problem here is that the information is confined to the computer on which it resides, or on a network shared within an office. Rarely is it possible to share such things across an entire organization with multiple locations; the beauty of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems is their single database that allows real time sharing everywhere a business is.
Using bar coding for inventory and warehouse control does away with complicated data entries. It becomes a valuable production tool with the ability to provide inventory counts, item numbers, quantities, and lot/serial numbers on product going out along with product coming in. The system also allows users to initiate their own personalized data fields for bar coding.
Essentially, the Sage 100 ERP software system, with its bar coding abilities, automates warehouse transactions and supply chain operations.
Contact Oates & Company today to learn more about how we can find the perfect Sage software for you.
