How Mobile App Can Solve: Top 5 Inventory Management Challenges for Manufacturers?

On one end where mobility is driving all segments of the industry making the inclination towards a smart approach, on the other hand, manufacturing industry despite being an industry with the highest turnover still, lack technological advancement for smart work. Manufacturing industry today is still at the pavement of technological innovation.

There are various challenges that are still not solved and hamper the processing of functions in the industry. One such challenge is inventory management in manufacturing industry.

However, a recent trend suggests that with the proliferation of mobile devices and mobile apps, the manufacturing industry has taken the big leap towards adopting the latest technologies to gain a competitive advantage.

If facts are to be considered – Data source (Infosys):

• There are 70% of manufacturers who look at mobility as the key driving factor in transforming downtime to productive time.
• While 80% of manufacturers are planning to increase the use of mobile apps and other mobility solutions to experience high productivity in manufacturing processes.

The push for mobile apps adaptation is hugely from both customers and the competition. As customers’ expectations have gone up, industry ought to look beyond traditional methodologies and bring innovation into their ideas.

Let’s see how mobile apps are solving various inventory management issues in the manufacturing industry. A mobile app development company can help develop such applications. We have picked top 5 challenges and their solution offered by mobile apps.

1)  Productivity Improvement

While new trends are inculcated in the current scenario to sort out challenges, mobile apps have played a smart role in boosting the manufacturing industry productivity.  One of the biggest challenges in the manufacturing industry is to manage inventory while not missing out to maximize production in minimized input. Plus, with ever-changing dynamics of manufacturing industry is quite problematic as it demands prompt changes as and when required.

Mobile apps here play a major role in eradicating the elaborated challenge and widen the arena to increase enterprise support systems, resource planning, eliminates paperwork, streamline service processes and increase customer satisfaction.

Fact alert: According to a study, when mobile apps are implemented in the manufacturing industry, it saves employees an average of 42 minutes daily per person.

2)  Faster and Efficient Inventory Management

There are instances in inventory management when it becomes a burden to manage all the paperwork going on in the manufacturing business. Having a mobilized inventory management system increase the chances of efficiency when compared with loads of paperwork management.

With the support of a mobile app, it’s actually possible for employees to eradicate most of the inter-department paperwork, taking inventory and receiving to the warehouse. Apart from this, it also enables employees to do any necessary edits and make changes in the orders thus increasing accurate information and documentation.

3)  Real-time Tracking

It’s fairly known that manufacturing industry is one major industry that runs on huge investment and turnover. Being a big monetary industry, businesses have to be secure of any suspicious activity either by an employee or in inventories. The solution to this problem is a mobile app that captures employee activities through GPS.

• It becomes easier in dispatching workers and shipments to their work sites while locations are visible to everyone involved.
• It is easier to plan routes for trucks carrying inventory materials. Routes can be shorten considering the date, time of arrival, traffic, weather, and other factors.

4)  Effective Utilization of Resources

Earlier, inventory management was all about human effort and labour. It usually involved as many employees as possible since inventories are huge to look after. Each employee had a specific task and the task had to be performed diligently to avoid any hassle.

With mobile apps in place,

• Maximum tasks of inventory management would be taken care of by the app itself
• Employees could be utilized at other tasks like brainstorming, training, planning
• The approval process can be easily reduced as real-time information sharing is there over apps

5)  Meet Customer Expectations

All business is about gaining maximum customers on board. Despite huge technology, planning, execution, few businesses fail due to the lack of understanding of customers’ expectation. Same goes with the manufacturing industry. The products manufactured are for consumer usage and if they are not happy with it, it’s difficult to retain them.

Mobile app helps in this challenging task to retain customers and meet their expectation. Many plants are situated in different places and sometimes globally. Mobile app expedites the entire process of product placement till product delivery thus ensuring that no way customers are dissatisfied with the services.

Conclusion:

To sum up, the manufacturing industry is itself a very wide industry. Inventory management is one of the skills that industry has to possess in order to be organized, planned and maintained. Instead of having multiple employees working on inventory management, it’s easier to manage inventory with the help of a handheld device.

It’s a smart move to follow the trend that keeps you up with the latest market changes and meet customer expectations simultaneously. There are many trends that might come up, but then it’s not necessary to adopt all the advancements. One transformation like mobility is enough to fulfil your requirements while keeping the customers at the highest priority. And mobile does exactly what is needed in inventory management – reducing the cost, increasing productivity.