How do you manage material stocks in the factory?

What is materials and product inventory management?

Inventory management in a factory is a key function for planning, controlling and monitoring the flow of raw materials and finished products. This involves setting up processes to ensure the availability of raw materials and components required for production, as well as the management of finished product inventories.

Optimized management is the process of monitoring and controlling inventory levels of raw materials, components, work-in-progress and finished goods in the plant. It helps to avoid the 2 main pitfalls of over-stocking or shortages, minimize storage costs and improve management of storage space. 
It involves the coordination of activities between different plant departments, such as production, logistics, procurement and planning. This management is essential to ensure that materials and products are available on time, avoiding production delays, wasted time and additional costs.

Inventory management within a plant is usually carried out by the logistics or operations departments. These departments are responsible for planning, organizing and controlling stocks of raw materials, semi-finished and finished products. These departments are responsible for planning, organizing and controlling inventories of raw materials, semi-finished and finished products. The tasks are numerous, and include forecasting future product demand and ensuring replenishment, managing receipts and warehousing, regularly monitoring stock levels and carrying out inventories, managing orders and dispatching them, and analyzing inventories, associated costs and consumption trends.

What are the key functions of MES software for inventory management?

MES software helps manufacturers manage their product inventories, by offering specific functions. Here are 5 key functions that are essential in MES software :

1/ Real-time monitoring of stock levels
MES software must offer precise visibility of the quantities of raw materials and finished products available.

2/ Management of incoming and outgoing stock
MES software records stock movements, whether for raw materials procurement or finished product order shipments.

3/ Serial or batch number tracking
Products are tracked by serial or batch number, so MES software must manage and track this important information throughout the manufacturing and distribution process.

4/ Low stock alerts
MES software is configured to send alerts when stock levels reach a predefined minimum threshold, enabling replenishment to be scheduled.

5/ Inventory optimization
Thanks to Artificial Intelligence or other advanced algorithms, MES software should be able to analyze historical stock data and demand forecasts, and thus help optimize stock levels.

How to manage raw materials and finished goods inventories with MES AVEVA software?

Factory Software offers a range of AVEVA software solutions for managing factory inventories:

AVEVA MES Operations enables you to monitor and control every stage of the production process, from receipt of raw materials to delivery of finished products. MES Operations includes functions to manage inventory operations and enable end-to-end traceability between storage locations, mobile storage units or production equipment for raw materials, semi-finished and finished products. Material quantities are automatically updated in the production inventory as materials are consumed and products are manufactured. 

AVEVA Batch Management: provides highly flexible management of all batch operations found particularly in the life sciences, fine chemicals and food industries. Compliant with ISA-88 standards for batch control, AVEVA Batch Management integrates guidance and monitoring for both recipe management and batch execution. Integrated material management functionalities include raw material consumption and movements, semi-finished and finished product levels. All this contributes to providing electronic batch records (EBR).