Inventory management, a component of supply chain management (SCM), is essential for the success of apparel and fashion companies; Not having enough inventory means you run the risk of losing sales, while having too much inventory can be costly in more ways than one.
With inventory management as a part of your fashion ERP software, you:
- Make it easy to control and assess what you have in stock, and whether or not you need to ramp up or slow down production
- Can provide your people - both in your organization and outside - with access to the information they need, where and when they need it
Inventory management as part of an ERP software
General Benefits of Inventory Management
In general, with an efficient inventory management system, you can expect to:
- Eliminate out-of-stock issues
- Eliminate waste
- Avoid profit loss due to too much inventory
- Increase employee efficiency
- Stay ahead of the competition with accurate planning
Apparel & Fashion Inventory Management
In the apparel and fashion industry, companies can be challenged by styles that come in many colors, sizes, and collections - many details that need to be registered and managed right from the design phase to sales and delivery.
At TRIMIT, we have developed a software solution for fashion companies. It is built on the solid foundation of Microsoft Dynamics NAV and works by adding years of fashion specific functionality to the world-renowned ERP.
TRIMIT Fashion - manage your fashion business from design to delivery
Peek at Inventory Management in TRIMIT Fashion
The following is a list of inventory management areas in TRIMIT Fashion. Please note that this is very simplified.
For a professional walk-through of the functionality in TRIMIT Fashion, I recommend that you contact us for a free demo by one of our product specialists.
Sales - Available Quantity
When creating sales orders for styles on stock, the sales order feature supplies you with vital information like 'available quantity', which ensures that you give your customer true information of what he can get.
TRIMIT Fashion calculates the available quantity from inventory, sales orders, purchase orders, and production orders, taking into consideration all possible transactions for the specific item or components. If there are not enough available items on current stock, the system informs the user of the next availability, (for instance goods coming in from a purchase order next week).
Purchase
The purchase area is where you can purchase anything to stock, finished styles, fabrics, trimmings or other items, so you need a purchase order and features like suppliers, pricing deliveries etc.
- Purchase Directly From a Sales Order
With TRIMIT Fashion, you can create a purchase order directly from a sales order. The system creates a link between the purchase and the sales order making it easy to track exactly where it comes from. This feature comes in handy, when you get special orders that you need to follow closely, or when you need to purchase outside the regular season or never-out-of-stock. These orders will not interfere with the demand planning. - Receiving Directly to Purchase Orders
You can assign received items directly to the purchase order. This will speed up the process in getting the goods in stock in the system, and to control that the supplier has delivered as ordered. Differences between the quantities in a purchase order and actual quantities can be handled (shortages and surpluses).
Allocation & Picking
Before the picking takes place, you have to allocate the available stock to the sales orders and you might need to divide shortages over the customers. TRIMIT Fashion has a very flexible way of setting up the allocation procedure. Furthermore, the results of this allocation proposal can be manually overruled.
You can create the picking document from the allocation list, and the warehouse can start its activities. The picking document will only include goods that are in stock and not yet shipped.
Production - Season and Never-out-of-Stock (NOOS) Styles
The demand planning feature separates calculations for seasonal styles and for the NOOS styles. You can calculate a season demand planning when the pre-sales period is over, and you can calculate a NOOS demand planning every week if necessary. The calculations of the NOOS styles combines both sales and minimum stock levels.
More Information
You can read more about our software solution for the apparel and fashion industry on the page TRIMIT Fashion.
For a free demo by one of your product specialists, please fill out the form on the page Request a Demo.