The Inventory Control module of WISL Warehouse Management provides for the maintenance of the perpetual inventory through the various warehouse management routines outlined above, tracking product by stocking unit id(eg carton). It provides facilities for conducting detail inventory audits(cycle counts) using RF based facilities as well as audits for corporate financial control. Reporting provides for the tracking of product movement at the stocking unit level and monitoring of inventory levels over time.

The following demonstration includes the inventory inquiry facility that may be accessed from any of the WISL Warehouse Management data entry routines and a sample of the interactive procedure utilized to conduct an inventory audit.

  Inventory Inquiry

There is no menu action to access the Inventory Inquiry facility
The Inventory Inquiry may be accessed from any data entry routine in the system by entering "I" and the desired sku code or scanning the corresponding barcode
The inquiry indicates that there is 1 stock keeping unit of product VPD5W07 stored in warehouse 2 in location CRT and 0 stored in location RCK
Hitting <Enter> returns the program to the point from which the inquiry was invoked

Inventory Audit

There are many options available to handle inventory audits. Various facilities are available to support different requirements ranging from a cycle count of a small section of a warehouse to a complete financial audit of the entire inventory. Some preparatory clerical work must be undertaken before the audit begins and some procedures must be followed to re-establish the perpetual inventory counts upon completion of the audit. Below is a demonstration that constitutes the actual counting procedure which is normallly conducted with RF based hand-held terminals.

The Count Audit is selected from the RF Inventory menu
The warehouse ID and Audit ID must be specified
The warehouse location must be entered along with the SKU ID and the current count of units is displayed with aprompt to override Usually the location code is scanned from a label on site as is the sku code from a label on one of the product units
The count determined by the auditor is entered
A confirmation prompt is then issued
A second auditor re-counts the same section of the warehouse but has a different result for the VHD4W07 product
The second auditor enters the revised count
The second auditor also receives a confirmation prompt

Reporting is available to monitor the counting results and identify corrective action prior to finalizing the count. Two examples follow: