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:

1. How much of an item is “Available to Promise” … AtP?
2. 3PL inventory visibility across multiple Customers thru a secure portal
3. When demand exceeds supply the question becomes: to steal?  or not to steal inventory for another order??

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:

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
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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:

• 20% Labor savings
• 200% increase in order volume with your current staff
• 100% reduction in paper
• 50% reduction in data entry
• 3-to-5-month ROI payback!

​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