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CMS Inventory Management

Benefits

The CMS Inventory Management module is designed to help you increase your return on inventory investment and still maintain a high degree of customer satisfaction while optimizing customer service levels. This application provides you with up-to-date information that will enable you to substantially reduce inventory through the reduction or elimination of safety stock for order point items, reduce total inventory investment by highlighting overstocked or slow moving items, and maintain tight operating and audit controls

Product Summary

Unique, and vital, to the real-time inventory status of CMS is its Planned Inventory Position (PIP). Every plannable part has a PIP: 490 days of future inventory status including all supporting details (allowing troubleshooting for shortages as well as visibility for fire sales or engineering substitutions for surpluses). This inventory position is updated dynamically, constantly monitoring potential problem areas. As a result, material managers can manage inventories proactively rather than constantly fire-fighting in a reactive environment.

Features

Inventory Management is fully integrated with all other CMS modules and provides real-time input, review and analysis of inventory parts and quantities. User-defined fields are provided along with Text Management.

Some features of the Inventory Management module are:

Part Master - Includes the part number to uniquely define the part, description, type, category, default General Ledger (G/L) accounts, default valuation method, and whether or not the part is tracked by serial number, by lot, or by both. Alternates can be defined for use in the planning process.

Generic Cross-Reference - Parts may be grouped by generic descriptors, i.e., "bearings", for ease of finding items when the part number and description is unknown. An additional generic description is provided to further refine the search. This function is useful for analysis of like items toward standardization efforts. CMS programs requiring entry of a part number, accept a generic reference entry and display a list of part numbers to select from.

Locations Master - Each location within the file is identified by an eight character code. The combination of warehouse code and location code identify a unique location for the company. Multiple parts and/or multiple lots may be stored in a given location and multiple locations may contain a given part and/or lot.

Part / Store / Lot / Quantity - All inventory transactions in CMS are lot specific. The part/store/lot serves as a cost pool record for a given quantity (or lot) of a part in your inventory whether or not it is lot tracked. "Part" is the part number associated with the part; "Store" is the code associated with the warehouse in which the part is stored, and "Quantity" is the transaction amount for that part you purchased or manufactured.

Valuation - You can automatically create and maintain true LIFO/FIFO records for costing purposes. Seven other valuation methods are also available.

Inventory Management also includes several support modules, as follows:

Warehouse Management

"Stores" or warehouses can represent warehouses that physically exist to planning, or they can represent 'non-nettable' storage locations defined for special purpose. CMS provides a technique for defining stores that are hidden from the planning system. These stores can be used to 'stock' rework or scrap parts so that CMS cannot allocate their materials for sales or production jobs.

Physical Inventory

CMS provides a set of Physical Inventory functions that you can use to update Inventory Quantity records with a physical count of your inventory. Physical Inventory provides extensive variance reporting and variance posting capabilities. You can also print multiple recounts to redo questionable counts and override the previous count session.

Cycle Counting

Cycle Counting provides programs and subroutines to support true cycle counting in CMS. This provides a complete front-end to the physical inventory module to automatically select the parts to be counted in each cycle count session (subject to manual overrides) and to manage an ongoing program for increasing inventory accuracy. In addition it offers ABC criteria based cycle counting, including user-defined category and count parameters, and automatic posting of reconciliation entries. At the conclusion of the count session, cycle count results are stored in new files for analysis purposes. You control the number of years of history retained on-line.

Serial Number Tracking

Allows you to assign serial numbers to a unit of a part in inventory. CMS then tracks the serial numbers added to and removed from inventory. You can serialize component parts and assemblies and the system keeps track of usage by job. CMS provides full serial number traceability from the point of sale downwards.

Lot Tracking

CMS supports two degrees of lot tracking: summary or detail. The differences are at the summary level you are given the total quantity of parts involved in a transaction at a given time. Where detailed tracking maintains a file showing individual movement quantities and dates. The lot tracking files retain the vendor lot number. CMS provides full lot traceability from the point of purchase to the customer or vice versa.

Re-Order Point

Re-Order Point planning provides the capability to plan in real-time for replenishment of parts, manufactured or purchased, based on usage history. The processing logic automatically maintains economic order quantity (EOQ), safety stock, and re-order point values. Item level re-order point control (typically low value/high volume) is provided for replenishment planning. Floor stock items are a good example.

Major Functions

• Time-phased Planned Inventory Position
• History and Details of Transactions
• Movement Summary and Detail
• LIFO/FIFO Pool
• On-Order Position
• Parts Master File
• On-Line Analysis of Surpluses, Safety Stock, ROP Intrusions, or Critical Shortages

Major Reports

• Quantity by Warehouse
• Price and Quantity by Part
• Min/Max Analysis
• Cycle Count
• Physical Inventory Variance Report
• Master Parts List
• Inventory Valuation
• Slow Moving Items
• Months Since Last Used
• Parts at Standard Cost
• Lot Recall
• Lot Tracking
• Serial Number Tracking

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