One of the main inventory objectives is to determine the actual stock of all materials, i.e. what the company owns and in what quantity. In companies where this process is carried out manually across all areas, or at least in part, stocktaking can be a real challenge. This is because employees who have to search for items throughout the company or warehouse in order to count them manually are wasting their working time, which they could otherwise use much more efficiently.

Periodic inventory - what's the best place to start?

In the run-up to an inventory, it is important to consider how comprehensively the topic of resource management is viewed in your company and what challenges you have faced in this regard over the course of the year or the last few years. It is worth answering the following basic questions:

• Do you know where your resources are at any given time? This includes small items that are in constant use and frequently misplaced.
• How can you be sure that the warranty periods of your resources are properly managed despite the lack of monitoring? Mistakes that happen by mistake or result from not being fully aware of something can also result in serious losses for the company in practice.
• To what extent do resource flows affect the efficiency of a company's production processes? Are you aware that many of your company's resources are constantly on the move and, if so, how are these movements recorded?
• Can you define bottlenecks and areas for improvement within processes?

Make your inventory smarter!

Today's modern IoT solutions can speed up the annual inventory process by tracking the location of resources. They not only simplify the inventory process itself, but also support the daily management of company resources. The introduction of such technologies represents a perfect opportunity for companies to enter the world of Industry 4.0 and digitalization by uniting the real and digital worlds.

Continuous monitoring of materials provides you with information that can be used to create a data-based environment. This allows you to back up daily business decisions with real-world examples and predict future business outcomes based on resource-related data. Modern technologies are therefore a ticket to optimization and solid process design, helping you to maintain a better overview even in uncertain, risky situations.

Try out Comarch Asset Tracking

Comarch Asset Tracking is a cloud-based solution in which specific company resources are provided with tags or sensors. In this way, resources of different sizes, from small keys to large equipment elements, (semi-)products or even vehicles, can be tagged. The tags or sensors are connected directly to systems in which the data collected is stored and analyzed.

Asset Tracking is a useful tool for monitoring the current location and movement of materials and their life cycle in real time. Thanks to this comprehensive knowledge of company resources, the potential of operational processes can be fully exploited. It can even create new revenue streams that give your business a chance to grow.

Further information

You can find out more about asset tracking in the current whitepaper:

- A smart factory thanks to asset tracking

- Optimization of production and logistics processes with asset tracking