News & TrendsOUR BLOGS AND ARTICLES HAVE BEEN DEDICATED TO THE CONCEPT OF SHARING NEW INFORMATION ON OUR PRODUCT, THE INDUSTRY, AND GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON INVENTORY MANAGEMENT OVER THE YEARS.
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Steve Dwyer - CRO, WithoutWire Jif product recall reminds inventory management SME of the need to share the goods news. On May 20, 2022, an article about a voluntary recall of Jif products by J.M. Smucker Co. caught the attention of a SME (subject matter expert) on inventory management, the critical nature of these events prompted me to write this blog on Digital Recall Protection. Did you know that on average, 1,279 drugs are recalled every year! According to FSIS (Food Safety Inspection Services), average food recalls range between 50 and 120 in a given year. The most common recalls are related to concerns of Listeria, Salmonella, Unapproved substances and Undisclosed allergens. Have you ever been through a recall yourself? In a best-case scenario, it is a large disruption to your ongoing business. Your internal resources are sent scrambling through vendor paperwork, throughout the warehouse, throughout the quality department and throughout your shipment paperwork. Our government agency Food Safety Inspection Services will also lend a hand to help you through the crisis. And why do I say crisis? Because in the worst case scenario a recalled item can cause serious harm to your consumers, your product brand, and your corporate image and reputation! While companies can do many things to prevent recalls, in many scenarios they are not completely avoidable. So, whether that drives you, or the government led FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) drives you, it is important to apply best practices and training on quick and accurate methods for containing a recall concern from getting out of hand. WithoutWire has developed a 3-step, 3-minute digital recall that prevents an initial concern raised by any of your employees from becoming a major issue. It starts with accurate lot, expiration and/or serial tracking of your raw materials and finished goods. When you track your finished good creation through the WithoutWire system you always have full lot traceability back to the raw materials. That is key, because you cannot always predict where the initial concern will be raised. The FSMA also requires food companies to digitally track their lots 1 step back and 1 step forward in your supply chain. Having these records kept digitally in an inventory management platform like WithoutWire means you are always prepared to act on these concerns. STEP 1: You can immediately lock down all item/lot materials in question within your facility through our WithoutWire web console:  STEP 2: Now you want to prevent any more suspected contaminant from entering your warehouse. So, you want to place that item or vendors items on immediate hold upon receipt, pending quality inspection until further notice.  STEP 3: And finally, you want to pull up a digital list of all Customers who have received this item, or sub-component of an item/lot that is in question over a specific date range.  Our 3-step process is accomplished all within 3 minutes … digitally. Through Recall Protection, WithoutWire provides a very inexpensive insurance policy to enable FSMA or DSCSA (Drug Supply Chain Securities Act) compliance and protection for a very substantial risk to your business!
If you would like to see a Product Recall demonstration of WithoutWire you can request it today. We hope that you will contact us to today for a product demonstration of complex inventory made simple for Distribution, Manufacturing and/or Field Service. Steve Dwyer Chief Revenue Officer WithoutWire Inventory Sciences
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Inventory allocation is often lamented for its degree of difficulty. Most ERP systems are just not equipped to handle the many supply chain exception conditions. And then layer the need to go paperless using advanced mobile inventory solutions and the inventory challenges become complex. Sophisticated warehouse management designed to be easy to understand becomes the only answer  The top 3 challenges which face most supply chain folks are:
With unlimited supply, these challenges would never be an issue. But that is rarely the reality. More common are scenarios of ever-changing forecasts and demand. It turns out that one company has cracked the code. And the answer was right in front of us all the time … item attribute allocation sets. Take scenario one, a typical use case in the omni-channel where Shopify, Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), and a multitude of other e-commerce platforms need visibility to AtP. It turns out that Available to Promise is a simple calculation: Inventory on Hand – Sales Orders = AtP. It can get complicated quickly though if you need to separate availability by channel. Take one franchisor customer of ours for example. Most of their items need to be sold in 3 different channels. 1. Internal Franchisor consumption, 2. External Franchisees and 3. Their B2C ecommerce channel. Each channel can have unique criteria around what constitutes Inv on Hand and Sales Orders. For example, the franchisor channel is more willing to unallocate their inventory then the B2C channel. In B2C, if you can not fulfill on your AtP, there can be severe fines or even defaults on agreements with major channel partners like FBA. Inv on hand needs to be more closely managed for this reason. Business rules are enabled to handle multiple channel needs for AtP within the WithoutWire console. This creates the need for security and permissions around mobile functionality. Managing allocation in this way optimizes your revenue AND customer satisfaction! In the illustration below you can see that item #2425 is allocated to (reserved for) the Customer “Cayman Water” and is not available to any other customer’s order:  Scenario two utilizes our WithoutWire tools for 3PL, consignment and Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI). The WithoutWire platform extends seamlessly with the Microsoft Platform through our Power Automate, Power Connectors and Power Apps. This not only allows us to identify Customer inventory with ownership, but it drives reporting to Customers to not only make requests to meet their needs, but real-time visibility to their inventory, its quantities, its movements, and corresponding invoicing. We connect our system to the Microsoft Customer Portal so that our clients have a security-controlled environment to address the common inventory questions, and power to win new 3PL customers … and retain them!  The third scenario is perhaps my favorite. Have you ever had inventory disappear in your warehouse? I believe this has been the case for every prospect I have ever spoken with over the past 14 years! Now you see it … now you don’t. Where does it go? Warehouse Ghosts must exist! Well not really, this problem has led WithoutWire to ghost-busting new functionality using “Allocation Sets”. Think of this as “reservation” of inventory. The ability to set aside critical inventory for its intended purpose, out of reach of others who may not have done proper inventory planning. This has several common use cases including technicians who need the same part. Or various channels who would like to grab a high-demand part. But perhaps the most common, is for staging parts against long running projects. Suppose you are procuring parts over the next 30 days to stage for a project that you need to install. If every time you turn around your “reserved” parts are being taken by other “immediate use” projects, you will quickly feel like you are in a never-ending game of “whack-a-mole”. To solve this, our customers stamp each item to its designated project as it arrives. Now stealing of inventory can still occur, but no longer by accident. With the proper Supervisor authority, inventory swapping is planned and executed thru our mobile application. For these use cases, a little bit of discipline goes a long way in optimizing supply chain inventory movements.
We hope that you will contact us to today for a product demonstration of complex inventory made simple for Distribution, Manufacturing and/or Field Service. Steve Dwyer, Chief Revenue Officer WithoutWire steved@WithoutWire.com  Leaving paper and spreadsheets can be challenging. Resistance to change is only half of the battle, the other half comes from complex alternatives. Complex inventory challenges can be met with complicated solutions and that can feel like you are doubling down on expensive! What if you could achieve a return on investment with improvements in usability and the following hard dollar savings:
WithoutWire has modernized the mobile interface for warehouse, production and field technicians. With real-time integration to Dynamics, our solution needs minimal training to gain maximum adoption among your workforce. Contextual intelligence guides workers to follow a process that is predictable and repeatable. With our focus on simplifying complex inventory challenges we have introduced a powerful mobile experience for replenishing inventory with a Just-in-Time (JIT) supply just when you need it, in just the right quantities. Distribution Laboratory and medical supplies are examples of where stock-outs can literally be a case of life or death. Who says supply chain is not important? Lab technicians and nurses should never run out of critical hospital and medical supplies to do their job. Gloves, syringes, and masks can be critical to their protection and the protection of their patients. Through WithoutWire enhanced replenishment, lab closets and hospital supply rooms never run out of those critical supplies. Cross-site replenishment was a challenge that WithoutWire had to simplify and solve for our clients. Transfer picks, in-transit and cross-site moves all follow one set of logic within our system. Simple, consistent, and predictable flow of goods need to extend beyond the 4 walls of your warehouse to hospital and lab closets of supply.  Manufacturing If only manufacturing staging had unlimited space ... A common challenge for our Manufacturing Clients. Production jobs often span a whole day or multiple shifts throughout the day. Shutting down the line to wait for raw material delivery creates tremendous inefficiency. WithoutWire has constructed the replenishment logic to schedule raw material deliveries JIT. Fully automated through mobile we take the complexity out of your required production inventory supplies. Just set it. And forget it. We can drive an hourly re-supply via our automated mobile WithoutWire software. Production runners follow the pick tasks and replenishments driven by our mobile application. No more production shutdowns. No more interruptions in each shift. Reducing the overflow in staging has the added benefit of minimizing cross-contamination of raw goods. By automating the repetitive replenishment tasks your production team can focus their attention on accurately recording the raw material and finished good lots, expiration dates, recording scrap, returning unused raw materials and conducting a proper quality inspection.  Field Service Field technicians serve a critical role in performing installations against work orders, closing service tickets, and executing on maintenance and repair jobs. Too often our field technicians become “logistics magicians!” When the tech does not have the right parts, or not enough parts, they are faced with multiple trips to close their work order and/or they become engulfed in supply chain challenges … which is not the best use of this precious field resource. Through WithoutWire enhanced replenishment, JIT supply is automated through the easiest mobile experience on the market today. Technicians can ‘Request Inventory’ required for upcoming jobs through their mobile device and have them automatically shipped to their driveway or an unmanned facility for pick-up. No paperwork, no data entry, and the most efficient use of your skilled workforce.  NEW! Ask about our mobile field service embedded within D365 CRM for Field Service. One app for the technician brings field service mobile power to the palm of their hands. Enabled through the Microsoft Power Platform using our low-code, no-code WithoutWire Power Connector. We hope that you will contact us to today for a product demonstration of complex inventory made simple for Distribution, Manufacturing and/or Field Service. Steve Dwyer, Chief Revenue Officer WithoutWire 612-839-4058  WithoutWire Inventory Sciences solves complex inventory challenges through a powerful mobile interface that is friendly and easy to use.
WithoutWire has modernized the mobile interface for warehouse, production and field technicians. With real-time integration to Dynamics, our solution needs minimal training to gain maximum adoption among your workforces. Contextual intelligence guides workers to follow a process that is predictable and repeatable. With our focus on simplifying complex inventory challenges we have introduced a powerful mobile experience for replenishing inventory with a Just-in-Time (JIT) supply just when you need it, at just the right quantities.  Field Service Field technicians are a valuable resource for completing those tough service tickets, performing installations against work orders and executing on maintenance and repair jobs. When the tech does not have the right parts, or not enough parts, they are faced with multiple trips to close their work order and/or they become engulfed in supply chain challenges … which is not what they were paid to do. Through WithoutWire enhanced replenishment, JIT supply is automated through the easiest mobile experience on the market today. Request inventory required for upcoming jobs through mobile and have them automatically shipped to your driveway or an unmanned facility for pick-up. No paperwork, no data entry, and the most efficient use of your skilled workforce.  Manufacturing If only we had unlimited space in our warehouse. Particularly in manufacturing staging. Production jobs often span a whole or multiple shifts throughout the day. Shutting down the line to wait for raw material delivery creates tremendous inefficiency. WithoutWire has constructed the replenishment logic to schedule raw material deliveries JIT. Fully automated through mobile we take the complexity out of your required production inventory supplies. Just set it. And forget it. We can drive an hourly re-supply via our automated mobile WithoutWire software. Production runners follow the pick tasks and replenishments driven by our mobile application. No more production shutdowns. No more interruptions in each shift. No more overflow of materials in staging. By automating the mundane replenishment tasks your production team can focus on accurately recording the raw material and finished good lots, expiration dates, recording scrap, returning unused raw materials and the proper quality inspection!  Distribution Laboratory and medical supplies are examples of where stock-outs can literally be a case of life or death. Who says supply chain is not important? Nurses and lab technicians should never run out of critical hospital and medical supplies to do their job. Gloves, masks, syringes can be critical to their protection and the protection of their patients. Through WithoutWire enhanced replenishment, lab closets and hospital supply rooms never run out of those critical supplies. Cross-site replenishment was a challenge that WithoutWire had to simplify and solve for our clients. Transfer picks, in-transit and cross-site moves all follow one set of logic within our system. Simple, consistent and predictable flow of goods throughout and beyond the 4 walls of your warehouse!  We hope that you will contact us to today for a product demonstration and a free download of our mobile app. From the appstore or google play search “WithoutWire” … all one word and take advantage of our Use-it-Free system.
WithoutWire has extended its solution to the Microsoft Power Platform using low-code, no-code power connectors. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/connectors/withoutwireinventory/ Now Microsoft partners and customers are empowered to complete their solution using the WithoutWire Inventory Platform of low/no code connectors. We hope to collaborate with you soon to solve your complex inventory challenges … just in time! Steve Dwyer, Chief Revenue Officer WithoutWire 612-839-4058 steved@WithoutWire.com  WithoutWire Inventory Sciences will showcase its Inventory Platform WMS at the upcoming Microsoft Summit in Houston, TX Oct 12-15. Community Summit North America is the largest independent gathering of the Microsoft Ecosystem. Thousands of people come together from around the globe each year for valuable insights and practical ideas that help them do more with Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform.
This year's summit will be packed with 300+ informative and educational sessions to deliver end-to-end learning around all versions of Dynamics 365 FO/AX, CE/CRM & BC/NAV, Dynamics GP & SL and the Microsoft Power Platform. We are proud to partner with Microsoft and are leveraging Power Automate and the Power Platform in our WMS solution - the WMS for complex inventory management. The Introduction of Power Platform isn't new, but the POWER in Power Platform lets us create innovations never seen before. These innovations affect ISVs, the partner channel, the speed and quality of customer solutions, the labor force available, and the relationship we all have with Microsoft. Discover how the Power Platform strategy has impacted WithoutWire; Microsoft's "no code/low code" approach and has made fundamental changes to our business and partner model. Now more than ever, out partners can create solutions that customers really need. Are you planning to attend the Summit this year? There is still time to register for in-person or virtual attendance. Several key Apple and Tesla suppliers have halted production at some of their Chinese facilities to comply with Beijing's tighter energy consumption policy, putting supply-chain continuity at risk during a peak season for electronics goods including the latest iPhones.
There are a few axioms of a tech services business with which everyone is familiar. One of the most critical being: If you make a promise to a customer, you need to meet it. If you don’t make promises, you may not have customers. A measurement that is commonly used here is OTIF. OTIF stands for On Time, In Full. How often do you service your customers on time and in full? If you must make multiple trips over the course of days or weeks, it drives down this measurement.
In the world of inventory, a trend has emerged causing executives and supply chain operations to redesign process and operations. This trend is the use of big data to feed into AI and machine learning.
Warehouse management is typically tedious and stressful work. However, it is an aspect of business management that plays a crucial role in the delivery and manufacture of products. Inefficient management of your inventory can waste company dollars through labor costs and even cause delays which can decrease customer satisfaction. Ultimately, warehouse management is something that should be prioritized in running businesses.
Thankfully, technological advancements have made warehouse inventory easier. Some practices are commonly used by businesses for efficient warehouse management. As the market grows, the importance of warehouse management has never been more important. Here are some popular practices in warehouse management: Electronics manufacturers such as Entech Electronics have had to beef up their supply chain and purchasing teams to meet the challenges of a global shortage of electronic components. Yaser Darban explains what companies can do to weather the shortage.
As the world recovers from a pandemic, another threat looms for manufacturers – a global shortage of components. So when companies like Apple say that a chip shortage can cause a loss of $3 billion to $4 billion, it makes us wonder how even industry leaders didn’t foresee it. The global chip shortage didn’t come without its warnings, which many industry leaders failed to heed. Preparing for global component shortages. Photo: Entech ElectronicsProjections say that the global chip shortage will last at least another 12 to 24 months, but there are ways in which businesses can mitigate the problem to manage the crisis better. At WithoutWire, we've seen dramatic changes in our history. Paper transitioned to computers, then to smartphones, and beyond. With artificial intelligence, things are evolving quickly; it requires us to start thinking differently about how we connect as a business. Whether you're privy to it or not, decoupled systems are here to stay. IT projects and software implementations, and integration have left many people with headaches, and we're here to help you avoid them. As a company, WithoutWire has had the privilege of being on the frontline of changes in technology. Payroll, HR, marketing, sales, customer service—all good examples of platforms that now live outside of the financial operations engine known as an ERP, and despite the critical nature of the software applications, they are now integrated into an ERP—not buried inside of it. These functional operations are now independent and creating new and innovative competitive advantages for their adopters.
If it isn't broken, it doesn't need a fix - especially if it's tech that was designed to make things easier. Sure, there are better ways to do something, but like Occam's razor, the most straightforward answer is often the correct one.
Barcodes trace back to the mid-to-late-20th century. June 26th, 1974 was the first-ever scan if you're looking for specifics. It was supposed to be an elegant solution; it was—and still is. There are always new developments to boost their efficiency, and there's always someone working to make inventory management more effortless. However, there are still times where the juice isn't worth the squeeze.  How important is it to meet the expectations of a promised ship date?
The answer, to most, is complex. Customer expectations are at an all-time high, and thus, the importance of promise-ship dates is also. Just recently, a distributor's primary concern was big-box retailers. In the 21st century, however, you need to include next-day shipping orders based online play just as big of a part. Not meeting your promise dates can be a reason your company loses its edge. If you're working with promise dates with distributors like Target, Wal-Mart, or Amazon, there are severe penalties if you don't get your product there in a timely fashion. So, your business needs to focus on specific pick orders and the importance of allocating products to those.  To say the Microsoft suite of products for business is expansive is almost an understatement nowadays. In the beginning, it was just a few programs that worked together, with some enhanced abilities to connect your information with the people who use it. Now, it’s become its neural network of systems that can make your business better. But how?
With everything available, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. We’ve been in the industry for the past two decades, and seen the speed at which technology is evolving; we’re here to be a resource, so we’ve developed what we’re calling The Microsoft Cheat-Sheet. Below is a list of the best products to bolster your businesses’ functionality inside, and outside the four walls of your warehouse. Damned if you do—damned if you don’t
It’s a common enough phrase, and for most companies today, they are really feeling it in the tech sector. Whether you’re a manufacturing, distribution, or a field service operation, ERP + WMS integration into 21st century tech is both difficult, and necessary. We’re going to cover the “what ifs” in the decision-making process, and go over suggestions.  LONDON (Reuters) - Global supply chains have been emptied as the epidemic and infection controls have encouraged a massive diversion of consumer spending from services to merchandise, especially long-lived durable goods.
Rebuilding operational inventories all along the manufacturing and distribution chain will keep manufacturers and commodity producers exceptionally busy and put upward pressure on prices through at least the end of the year. In the United States, real consumer spending in the first quarter of 2021 was roughly the same as in the fourth quarter of 2019, the last full three-month period before the first wave of the epidemic arrived. We live in the age of tech. We use smartphones, tablets, and computers to help us with almost all of our daily needs. Steadily and swiftly, AI is coming onto the scene for businesses, and the implications are huge. Think Terminator, or the Borgs from Star Trek. Cool right? Well, what we’re talking about may not be able to travel back in time, but it can certainly help you reduce work time.
Site transfers, if you're not familiar with the term, really revolves around the movement and requesting of inventory from one location to another, typically moving it over some significant amount of distance or changing of hands between who is managing it at one location, to another group or people that are managing it at a destination location.
There can be quite a variety around how that is all accomplished. But in general, it is the tracking, monitoring, picking and receiving of all those materials from one site to another. Sometimes that can be over the ocean, in shipping carriers or as an in-transit location from overseas as well. Support your team.
How can you help your inventory team improve using digital technology? When it comes down to it, we should all focus on one question: How much inventory do we truly need to keep on the books to run a successful business? An inventory team works best when it can ensure that they can find accuracy in the information and that they can adequately keep inventory that you need—in stock—when it's needed. That means we are always trying to maintain a better quality of customer service, and make sure that we have enough raw materials to meet the needs of production. Digital technologies include everything from a back-end record-keeping system to the barcode-scanning technology that identifies products. What we’re excited about is AI and predictive analytics. When it comes to reordering points with inventory, finding the correct answer is key. Inventory truth means that no matter what, you have a full 360-view of what’s available at any given time. If done correctly, digital technology can also reduce the cost of labor, saving you a couple of hundreds on paper throughout the process, shoring up mistakes, as well as lowering costs for materials across the board. Use a system that’s best with both.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There’s a tool for every job. Work smarter, not harder. There’s a million and a half euphamisms about process, building, and fixing something. Today we’re here to say, they’re right. But, it’s about how you use what you’ve got, and use it well. What’s the answer to the inventory management problem? The waters are murky, but we’re here to help you find out. Paper is easy, cheap, and universal. But, it also has shortcomings. Today, let’s dive into when paper is better, and how to use it in a system that utilizes the best parts of digital as well. We’re all living in the real world, with real jobs. The best part of it is, this isn’t high school. If somebody else is crushing it, you can copy their crib-notes.
It comes as no surprise that the biggest 3PL in the world is Amazon. They make weird, cylindrical robots that tell you about your groceries and servers that the majority of businesses use; for the most part, they make their money off of shipping other people’s goods. Storing them, transporting them, and doing it faster than the post office. How did they become the biggest 3PL in the world? Simply by working to be the best at it. They didn’t invent a new plane that can store more products and they certainly didn’t build new roads that only Amazon trucks can drive on. They streamlined processes and made decisions easier to make. They used the best + newest tech that was (and still is) available: Artificial Intelligence. By taking the headache of decision-making out of the picture, they’ve been able to make cross-country shipments daily, hourly, and sometimes, even by the minute--without a sweat. If there are seven trucks and five of them need to reach a certain weight limit, the machine learning inherent in their programming can do it. And, it can pack it better than the world’s best Tetris player. Got 300,000 packages going to Minnesota? We know which trucks can make it there the quickest. This point is that at the end of the day it’s about working smarter, not harder. There is no reason you can’t look at your classmate’s notes for this one. In fact, you’ll probably both do better on the test if you do. We know that the biggest 3PL in the world is using AI + Machine Learning to keep things moving. So, why not beat the system? With our Inventory Platform, you can boost your functionality, save on data entry, and build a better, scan-happy system that works on the same principles as the best in the business.  Where do you see yourself in 3 years?
Just 3 months ago, our answer would have been MUCH different. We’ve got some news, and it’s good. So good in fact, that we’re poised to hit that 3-year goal in about six months. Big things are happening in the tech space of #inventorymanagement and as luck would have it, we saw it coming. Alright already, what is it!? #WithoutWire has always made a name for itself by not just building systems people want now, but systems they’ll need in the future. By keeping an eye on the newest tech, software, and theories in inventory management, we try to think outside the 4-walls of the warehouse and build something that’s made to last. This time, we’re pretty excited. So excited in fact, that we’re updating our Podcast format + concept to build off the newest news + tech in the industry. We’re calling it: In Search of Inventory Truth. In March 2021 at the #MicrosoftIgnite conference, Microsoft announced their newest upgrade in the #PowerBI platform: Intelligent Order Management, or IOM for short. This system improves on #Manufacturing #fieldservices and #Distribution processes. Most importantly, however, it’s the latest jump forward in #AI and #MachineLearning that we’ve seen from Microsoft. If this were the launch of the newest smartphone, we would be on the sidewalk, in a lawn-chair, waiting for the store-open so we can get our hands on it. April 20, 2021, 8:36 AM CDT / Source: CNBC.com
By Amelia Lucas, CNBCProcter & Gamble announced on Tuesday that it will hike prices on baby care, feminine care and adult incontinence products in September to respond to higher commodity costs. The consumer giant joins a host of other companies, including Kimberly-Clark and Coca-Cola, that are raising prices to protect profit margins. The companies are betting consumers will be willing to pay more for the brand version instead of opting for a cheaper private label. However, that outcome depends on the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic and how many consumers will have the cash to spare. If the world was a game of monopoly, 2020 cracked its knuckles, and flipped the board over. Storefronts closed. Production shut down. Hoarding toilet paper caused a national shortage of multi-ply. There wasn’t a single industry, business, town, or person that wasn’t affected. Those that could adapt, did, and those who couldn’t—they hit some hard times.
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