Evaluating Material Management Solutions Beyond Pricing

Materials management allows manufacturers, Suppliers and traders to keep track of the movement of items. There are multiple master data management solutions providing pre-built components to automate and streamline material related activities in the organization. Apart from providing the real time prominence of movement of inventory in the supply chain, these systems also empower employees to have the necessary forecasting tools to help in making quick yet accurate decisions. Material management provides an array of benefits.

The below mentioned attributes highlight the important evaluation pointers based on which an enterprise should evaluate the capability of the available solution for materials management.

Administration

• 1. Classifying items should be possible to be done in the most detailed manner

• 2. It should allow easy planning and allocation

• 3. Tagging, classifying and importantly, analyzing each inventory item can be done in real time and with ease

• 4. Should support multiple units-of-measure for an item

• 5. Able to set up an assessment method

• 6. Able to identify standard supplier and his updated details

• 7. Defining planning type, apportionment, estimated costs and substitutes for an item

• 8. Able to group items within various heads for effective analysis and control

• 9. Enabling end-to-end visibility in real time

Warehousing

1. Managing the movement of inventory items within and outside the warehouse
2. Providing real-time visibility for the enterprise across the supply chain
3. Ensuring essential access controls in storage locations
4. Effective Inventory tracking
5. Empowering warehouse managers in the enhanced execution for supply chain actions
6. Enabling management for multi-level configurations and appropriate access permissions
7. Easing the use by assigning default zones in operations and account codes based on guidelines
8. Increasing usability without any compromise on the information quality.
9. Helping in executing warehouse operations smoothly by providing information on stock status conversions, stock enquiries by business units and transfers
10. Helping in finding stocking point, enquiry of attribute for item information and safety stocks. Also in lot management and expiry date

Planning of Inventory

• 1. Effectively providing current and forthcoming inventory related requirements

• 2. Ensuring right levels of inventory is available through tracking the required stock quantity for refill

• 3. Able to quantify material carrying charges

• 4. Helping in decisions for inventory ramp ups and downs

• 5. Empowering inventory manager in effective accomplishment of MPS (Master 6. Production Schedule), MRP (Material Requirements Planning)

• 7. Able to support in min-max level and reorder-level planning

• 8. Recording the range of lead timings

Quality management

1. Enabling integration of quality management with other business units like sales and marketing, production management, procurement etc.
2. Defining control points in quality control to ease localization of factors that are required to be monitored and controlled efficiently
3. Assisting in quality inspection plans
4. Can record details of the process in elaborated manner and help providing quality feedback to departments.
5. If needed, able to provide MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) for moving hazardous materials
6. Helpful in reducing shop floor rejections

Cycle Counting

1. Manage PI plan and creating physical tags at various levels like warehouse, zone, item-level etc
2. Generating printouts
3. Defining all other parameters for the counting processes

Inventory Analysis

1. Effective analysis for inventory level requirements scientifically and in real-time
2. Reporting methodologies and customization of performance indicators to suit to the organization
3. Support for array of devices – smartphones, laptops etc. through which analysis can be requested and received

These are the functional requirements of the required solution for the materials management. These are in addition to the technological requirements – like scalability, cloud support, upgradation etc. Evaluation on these pointers will help an enterprise to think beyond the challenges of IT to deploy and price of the solution. Evaluation on the parameters will help in recognizing the value addition to the business through effective and efficient management of inventory.

The author is an expert in the field of master data management. The writer has flair for writing and he keeps on writing various articles and blogs related to the industry.