With so many moving parts in modern supply chains, inventory visibility – knowing how much inventory you have and its movement along your supply chain is more essential than ever before. Inventory tracking helps you keep track of all the goods and inventory that your company has in stock. Excess inventory locks up capital and consumes additional resources like warehouse space.
However, only 33% of businesses are using inventory management software, whereas the remaining 67% still rely on either Excel or paper-based methods. IoT-based inventory tracking can help businesses overcome the challenges of manual inventory management processes and provide real-time visibility into their inventory.
How IoT Optimizes Inventory Management
Real-Time Inventory Tracking
IoT-based, real-time inventory tracking provides accurate, end-to-end visibility to raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods. IoT sensors track inventory in real-time across categories, product types, zones, facilities, and geographies – providing better insights into key metrics such as inventory utilization and warehouse space utilization. You can improve stocking efficiencies by knowing and forecasting what inventory they need, where they need it when they need to stock up, and when they’ll face a shortage. IoT-based inventory tracking helps you track the real-time location, condition, utilization, handling, and chain of custody for inventory across the globe and quickly respond to instances of theft or misuse.
Returnable Asset Monitoring
IoT-based inventory management can help you track reusable shipping assets wherever they go across facilities and even across geographies. Businesses can track assets in real-time to immediately identify and initiate the recovery of missing or stolen containers, even if they are in transit. You can analyze missing assets to identify theft, pilferage, or misappropriation patterns by location, transporter, vendor, or customer. You can leverage predictions, data trails, instant alerts, and asset routing automation to speed up asset recovery and conflict resolution
End-to-End Traceability
Lack of supply chain visibility and poor product traceability inevitably lead to product recalls – and when they do, they result in inventory chaos. End-to-end traceability across your supply chain means you can monitor your inventory – from its point of origin to its destination, and improve your response to both orders and recalls.
IoT and blockchain-enabled traceability provide a digital paper trail to track the entire journey of your inventory from your suppliers to your customers. Accurate, end-to-end details available in real-time help you optimize your inventory management processes. Tracking and tracing every item in your inventory increases inventory accuracy and improves customer service, while dramatically reducing your inventory carrying costs.
Accurate Inventory Records
Having better visibility into your inventory can help you get the right products in the right place at the right time. Keeping detailed records of inventory lots can help you avoid unpleasant incidents such as finding out that an entire batch of product or the raw material is expired or about to expire. Integrating IoT with your inventory management software can help manufacturers track and manage inventory lots from the time of receipt through production and shipping while maintaining accurate product information and traceability for future analysis.
Learn how businesses can accurately predict changing demands, reduce operational costs, and increase customer satisfaction through IoT-driven demand forecasting.
