Inventory control is defined as the process of ensuring that appropriate amounts of stock are maintained by a business, to be able to meet customer demand without delay while keeping the costs associated with holding stock to a minimum. Managing a company’s inventory is such an important part of most businesses. Without a proper management system in place, long-term profits can be affected, as more inefficiencies are likely to occur.
You can’t maximize profits without knowing:
- How much you have at a given time
- How much you’ve received
- How much to pay suppliers
- If there’s enough to fill orders
- When to order more
Managing your inventory matters because inventory is cash in disguise. Why wouldn’t you want to know how much you have?
Allocating or reserving stock
When managing the SigmaNEST inventory, you may find that you need to reserve certain sheets for specific customers or tasks. This article will give you an overview of how to do that.
Reserved and On Consignment stock
When adding sheets to the SigmaNEST inventory, there are three classifications for a sheet’s status: General Inventory, Reserved, and On Consignment.
A General Inventory sheet may be used for any work orders or parts, regardless of customer.
A Reserved sheet is a sheet owned by your company but may only be used for work orders and parts of a specific customer.
An On Consignment sheet is a sheet owned by a specific customer, and can only be used for work orders and parts of the same customer.
To add a Reserved or On Consignment sheet, follow the steps to add a new sheet and choose the appropriate status from the upper-right section of the window. Then choose the customer associated with the sheet and continue entering sheet data as usual.
Allocating stock to tasks
If you have multiple SigmaNEST workstations, occasionally, two programmers may accidentally try to use the same sheet for different tasks. Obviously, if there are not enough sheets available, only one programmer can use the sheet. So, to prevent situations like this where a sheet becomes double-booked, you can configure SigmaNEST to automatically allocate sheets to tasks. Effectively locking them and preventing other users from using or modifying them.
To do this:
- Go to the Tools Help tab and open the Configuration.
- Select the Defaults tab and expand the Sheet Defaults
- In the Sheet Lock Duration field, indicate how long a sheet should be locked after a user adds it to a task.
- Click OK to save Configuration settings.
From now on, any time a sheet is added to a task, it will be locked to that task and unavailable for other use. In the Sheet List, locked sheets are indicated by a plus (+) sign to the left of the Sheet Name. If you expand the plus sign, you can see who holds the lock and when it will expire.
If you are the owner of a sheet lock, you can right-click it and release the lock to make the sheet available to other tasks. However, if you are not the owner of the sheet lock, you will not be able to do this unless the feature rights are set to allow it.
You can therefore see that having visibility of allocated stock avoids confusion when reconciling physical stock with stock on the system.
