Looking For A Software Product
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
I work for a Water Company, kinda. We use Maximo to keep track of our stock, issue them for jobs, build up a cost. We also use it for works management. This is not a recommendation, just saying what we use.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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Maybe so, but Roger's not in his 20's. He won't live long enough to see it actually work.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
Hi Bill, Have you looked at Maximo or any other off-the-shelf CMMS systems? It's quite expensive (around £4,000 per User) but it does everything you could ever want when it comes to a full Maintenance system (Work Planning, Resource Scheduling, Asset Management, Inventory Management etc.). It can also do the Serial Number tracking on Parts while treating them under a common SKU (my background is in the pharma industry where this is a particular bugbear). I was working on developing a system last year which was put on the back burner which predicts spares usage and recommends stocking levels based on historical &/or estimated failure rates. I would hope to get it finished by the end of the year. If you have any interest in that, let me know. Dec.
Declan O'Brien Aldolex Irl ltd
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Maybe so, but Roger's not in his 20's. He won't live long enough to see it actually work.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
Maybe so, but Roger's not in his 20's. He won't live long enough to see it actually work.
I was going to comment on SAP as a CMMS but your comment sums it up perfectly :)
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
Maybe so, but Roger's not in his 20's. He won't live long enough to see it actually work.
I was going to comment on SAP as a CMMS but your comment sums it up perfectly :)
My running partner is in IT at our employer, and has been tangentially involved in migrating our line-of-business apps from our Oracle data bases over to the corporate IT's SAP system over the last several years. The last two words in that sentence sum up the situation perfectly.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Maybe so, but Roger's not in his 20's. He won't live long enough to see it actually work.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
We use Microsoft Dynamics NAV (with an LS Retail POS add-on) for our retail stores. It handles inventory and sales. It will cover your requirements, but it's not cheap to buy or implement.
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Hi Bill, Have you looked at Maximo or any other off-the-shelf CMMS systems? It's quite expensive (around £4,000 per User) but it does everything you could ever want when it comes to a full Maintenance system (Work Planning, Resource Scheduling, Asset Management, Inventory Management etc.). It can also do the Serial Number tracking on Parts while treating them under a common SKU (my background is in the pharma industry where this is a particular bugbear). I was working on developing a system last year which was put on the back burner which predicts spares usage and recommends stocking levels based on historical &/or estimated failure rates. I would hope to get it finished by the end of the year. If you have any interest in that, let me know. Dec.
Declan O'Brien Aldolex Irl ltd
Declan OBrien wrote:
Hi Bill,
It's Roger. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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Declan OBrien wrote:
Hi Bill,
It's Roger. :) /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
Ha!! I obviously had "Bill" on the brain after reading BillWoodruff's post!! Sorry Roger :-O
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
Have you checked Upwork.com or one of the other freelancer sites?
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
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Ha!! I obviously had "Bill" on the brain after reading BillWoodruff's post!! Sorry Roger :-O
Declan OBrien wrote:
I obviously had "Bill" on the brain
I forgive you, and, please, don't worry, it's usually not fatal. cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
What do your competitors use? Do you have a budget? Do you have a staff to maintain the data? Would you consider RFID tagging all 1,000 pieces of inventory. setting up sensors on the egress locations to ALARM who ever is trying to remove the device, to remind them to take the RFID off, and fill in the 3-5 Fields of info (who they are, why they are taking it, what job, etc)? I would want to bullet-proof the exiting of the inventory. Most of the time, people are too busy trying to avoid the alligators to remember they need to drain the swamp. Most systems fail, not because the system does not work. But because it does not "flow" (catching things when they need to be caught, helping people to do the right thing), and then because of users or lack of ability to keep the information up to date. Once the information is there, doing the things you suggested are a matter of: - Do they need to be automated? - Is it okay if it is a report or dashboard that shows the status? Email me if you want to dig deeper. We implement these kinds of solutions. We use tools that let you dump just about everything to Excel, and perform additional ad hoc analysis as you wish.
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
Hmm ... that's just the kind of application that I write for my business "Simple Software By Design". I put a copy of your post in my idea folder! If, at some point, you'd like to discuss development of something like this I'd be glad to talk to you. Might take a few months to do with our present work load but on the surface seems like exactly what we do. Send to "postmaster@simplesoftwarebydesign.com" if you'd like to talk. -Clockmeister
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
Sage 300 ERP has all the features you listed. I'm a dealer for this software in the USA.
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
As a matter of fact... One of the companies I work for imports and distributes auto parts. We have about 10,000 SKUs and have developed a system in-house that does almost everything in your requirements list. The only thing missing is serial number tracking. Not only does it suggest orders - based on your historical usage of a SKU - but, it allows you to enter quotes from multiple vendors for the same SKU, and suggests which vendor to buy from based on price. It is a Microsoft Access Front-end and SQL Server back-end. We don't sell it, but here is the good part: We have an Access-only version for customers. In addition to the inventory control and purchasing features, it also has job tracking. Not only that, it allows you to create and save custom jobs that can be called up with the click of a mouse, that have a list of parts (and quantities) that you have specified for that particular job. It also includes a complete, searchable catalog. Search for parts in the catalog, and with the click of a button you can add them to a job or a suggested PO. Obviously the program is geared towards automotive repair shops, but since it doesn't care what you enter into inventory or the catalog, it could actually be adapted to virtually any business. You could actually have some fun with it - naming jobs after exotic cars, etc. Email me if you'd like to take a look at it.
Ron Hinds
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I figure someone here either uses something like what I need, or has written a solution I can use. I've got a warehouse full of electrical stuff for building and maintaining power systems - utility scale. There's less than 1000 SKUs, but most are generic, and may have multiple manufacturers and multiple vendors who sell them. Linemen aren't famous for their love of paperwork, especially late at night in the midst of a storm while trying to get the lights back on, so we haven't had much luck getting them to report what they take and when we're low on something. It's no fun to discover that we're out of a part that is needed for a repair right now, but has a 6 week lead time. I need a solution, an inventory management tool that can do several important things. Among them:
- Track SKUs internally, and keep track of multiple manufacturer part numbers, as well as vendors who carry each.
- Track Quantities on hand in an easy to operate and understand manner.
- Track frequently used items and recommend stocking levels, keeping track of order multiples and quantity break points.
- It should generate Suggested Orders for items that are low in stock, and allow the user to select items from the list to be put into an automatically created Purchase Order.
- As items are received, select each as Received, and have the items (and last costs) added to Inventory
- It should allow items to be withdrawn for a job, and provide a running job cost
- Items with serial numbers should be tracked under a common SKU, but be traceable by serial number in stock and when sold to a job
These are the basic, minimum requirements, but I'm amazed how few commercially available products have all of these features. Do you know of any that do, or better yet, have you written such a tool? There's definitely a market for it!
Will Rogers never met me.
I could build you a MS based solution utilising Access as the main hub and using Excel and Word to generate forms and letters. I build systems and tools like the one you describe for my company tracking activity, assets, forecasting and automating reporting and admin processes. I have also integrated data capture using smartphones into a central database using a third party company, which is much easier than getting people to sit in front of a computer. Depending on the scope it shouldn't take more than a few weeks, if your interested then I can put a prototype together this week.
Peter Deacon
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My running partner is in IT at our employer, and has been tangentially involved in migrating our line-of-business apps from our Oracle data bases over to the corporate IT's SAP system over the last several years. The last two words in that sentence sum up the situation perfectly.
Software Zen:
delete this;Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.
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I can't imagine living under such conditions, Bill; it makes my complicated life seem rather mundane by comparison. But when you do get some students, let me know what they come up with for a solution. I am reminded of the days when I was in school, in a Control Systems class. My instructor, unknown to me at the time, was the chief engineer for developing the guidance and control systems of the Phalanx gun system, and he was having some really challenging stability problems with the control equations - the prototype tended to "off the rails" for no apparent reason, and he and his team spent most days measuring and recording its behaviors. I thought our test problems were oddly worded, and the sample values of angles and accelerations and voltages and such were unusually "real", as in academic circles they tend to use nicely rounded, even numbers for test values. These were decidedly not well behaved numbers. The entire final exam was an open-book, ten question test that we were given a week to complete. The answer to each question provided the necessary input to solve the next, so missing one was unacceptable. I found out later that he had posed the challenges he was dealing with at work as a challenge to students, first to define the actual response transform of the system, given input command values and real world responses. Determine the transfer function of the closed loop system, identify the roots and the errant poles which cause the instability, calculate the pole shifting compensation factors necessary to bring the system into a stable state, and lastly, design a circuit to apply those corrections. Most of us passed, and he went on to large bonuses for having solved the stability problems, never telling anyone at General Dynamics that he'd used the best of our exam solutions as a foundation for "his" solution to the problem. A creative approach to problem solving, I'd call it, though some might tag it "plagiarism." Feel free to have your students, when you have some, solve my problem, and I might just be able to pay you something for it. :-D
Will Rogers never met me.
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Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.
:laugh:
Software Zen:
delete this;