Material Flow
Orders, stock, deliveries and movements in one flow instead of three tables
Illustrative hours, not a measurement.
What was ordered, what arrived, what is on the shelf and what went out are usually four lists that do not agree. Material Flow makes them one chain: a purchase order becomes the expectation a delivery is checked against, a receipt writes the stock up, a consumption writes it down, and every movement says who, when and where. The figure a report needs is read, not counted.
What was ordered, what arrived, what is on the shelf and what went out are one chain of records, so the stock figure is the one everybody has and not the one somebody last counted.
- a purchase order becomes the expectation a delivery is checked against
- a receipt writes the stock up and a consumption writes it down, once, where it happened
- every movement carries who, when and from where, so a difference can be traced
- the figure a report needs is read from the movements, not assembled from them
- a business whose stock fits in one person's head and one shelf
- goods that are never counted because they are never scarce
- a warehouse system already in place that only needs connecting
Size: a large piece of work — an estimate from the pattern, not from your business.
What we would want to know before committing
- which materials or goods move, and roughly how many lines a month
- where orders, receipts and stock are written down today, and by whom
- how a delivery is confirmed — a signature, a photo, a paper note
- which figures somebody is asked for and cannot answer without counting
- walk one real order from placing it to using the last of it, and mark every place it is written down
- count the lines a month, and the times a month somebody counts the shelf
- agree which movements have to be traceable, and for how long