Our client, an IT solutions provider, offers sales and distribution systems to customers. Among their product portfolio is a desktop based inventory management system. To ease the process of the application installation and maintenance and to also take advantage of the newer technologies, our client wanted to upgrade the desktop application to a web based one. The solution developed by Icreon on the .net framework enables companies to setup and manage inventory, production plans, sales and delivery orders, with ease. The application has been integrated with hand-held devices used by pickers to enter details of inventory and stock checking.

Business Requirements

Our client offers inventory management solutions to customers, locally. The software was a desktop based one, which they wished to migrate to a web based one. The reason behind the migration was to upgrade the legacy system and take advantage of the features being offered by newer technologies and also to ease the process of application maintenance.

Migrating from a desktop to a web based application

Benefits:

• Being web based application deployment and maintenance is easy
• Provides support for multiple languages enabling our client to offer the application to customers in their native language
• Web based interfaces available with the solution enable companies to easily setup, configure and monitor their inventory.

Users:
The users of the system will be the employees of the company using the application. Access to the various modules of the application will be based on the roles assigned.

Solution:
Based on the requirements Icreon has been developed the solution on the .net framework. The application provides support for both SQL Server 2005 and Oracle databases. The development consists of two phases - 1) migration of the desktop application to a web based one 2) developing an application for the hand-held devices used by pickers to track the movement of items.

Web based Inventory Management System

The back-office inventory management system can be used by companies to track and manage inventory levels at warehouses. Based on their roles employees will be provided with access to specific sections within the application.

The various modules available in the application include:

Masters: This module can be used to define the master entities for the system. These include:

• User Master: User accounts can be created and managed through this module. A user is assigned to a specific warehouse; all data within the application will be pertaining to the specific warehouse.
• Truck, Supplier, Location and Warehouse Masters: The details of all trucks, suppliers, warehouses and warehouse locations can be maintained within the system.
• Customer Master: A customer database can be created and managed within the system. For each customer details such as customer code, name, contact person, address etc can be stored.
• Item Master: Contains a listing of all items available with the company. Pricing information for each item can also be maintained.
• Reason Master: The various types of reasons for good return due to damage can be stored within the system.
• Task Manager: The user can track the status of the tasks that have been assigned to various pickers. The user can also track the number of hours since that have elapsed since the task was assigned.
• Settings: Default settings for the application can be set. These include company name, address, super admin username and password etc.

Inbound Orders: Inbound orders such as production plans, purchase orders, transit delivery orders (orders that have been picked by the picker through the hand-held device) and goods return (details of the items that are returned due to damage) can be created and managed through this module. Items, available in the item master, can be associated with the various plans. The plans can be assigned to pickers, who in turn can view their assigned tasks through the hand-held device.
The status of the plans can be either open or closed. Relevant reports can be generated for plans that are closed.

Outbound Orders: Sales orders (both internal and for customers can be created) can be created and tracked through the application. The customer sales order has been linked to the logistics management software to retrieve information of all sales routes being used by the company. The sales order can be converted to delivery orders and will be available to the pickers.

Sales orders can be converted to delivery orders. Goods Issue Notes and Loading Control Sheets can be generated.

Sakes orders can also be converted to production plans. There is integration with a logistics management system so as to display sales orders places through that system.

Inventory: This module is linked to the hand-held device used by the pickers. Information about the goods put on hold, adjustments made by the picker in terms of the stock quantities etc can be tracked. All stock transfer requests sent by the pickers are available for processing. Users can also track the current stock levels available in the warehouse.

Reports: A variety of reports such as production plan, receipts, stock in hand, ageing analysis, stock movement etc can be generated. Report filtering criteria have been provided. Crystal Reports has been used to generate the reports.

Application for the hand-held device

We have also built the software for the hand-held device that is used by pickers to track inventory. The device lists out the tasks that are assigned to a specific picker. Tasks are the product orders, purchase orders and transit DOs that have been assigned to the picker in the StockPro application.

The picker can record the physical count of items available at the warehouse and can also track the details of items that have been transferred from one location to another.

Pickers can also scan the bar code of an item to check item price and stock availability

Technologies used in developing this application are: