For a business to run well, it needs to have a full understanding of its stock levels, how much material is coming in, and what’s required to fulfil orders. Equally important is being able to manage and monitor the status of the returnable containers and cylinders that are transporting those goods.
For operations and supply chain professionals, accurately assessing physical stock and checking it against financial records is paramount and reduces uncertainty and risk.
Inventory audits not only provide a thorough assessment of the status of your supplies, but allow companies to check, validate, and balance their returnable assets. This is essential in helping to improve efficiency and productivity – ensuring optimal use of assets by identifying idle or lost cylinders, so they can get back into service as quickly as possible.
In the gas industry, for example, routine audits help users determine exactly how many of their valuable returnable cylinders are at their facilities, en route for delivery, or with customers.
By comparing actual stock levels with their records, it’s possible to quickly uncover any discrepancies and take action.
Fundamentally, this means companies are better able to:
Manage their supplies and stock levels
Identify lost or unused containers and cylinders
Locate idle assets and get them moving again, rather than having to source expensive replacements
Establish whether they have enough stock to complete their orders
Save themselves a lot of time and effort
By using readily available software and technology, business owners have complete visibility over the whereabouts of their cylinders, containers, and totes – making it possible to optimize their inventory processes, reduce stock discrepancies, and improve overall operational efficiency.
“Inventory audits with TrackAbout are well worth the time, effort, and investment,” says Doug O’Dell, Vice President of Sales at TrackAbout, Inc. “We help to automate the process and make it far simpler by getting that data flowing.”
For some, inventory audits are carried out on a semi-regular basis – with stocks routinely checked monthly, quarterly, or even annually.
TrackAbout users benefit from serialized tracking – the perpetual tracking of individual items – and can utilize the vast amounts of important data that’s collected along the way. Our software now also provides a cycle count option, so smaller samples of stocks can be counted quickly to determine overall inventory levels.
A simple scan of a barcode that’s attached to a cylinder or container instantly captures data about both the asset and what’s inside it. This invaluable information is uploaded and stored securely in the cloud – ready for whenever you, or your team, need to access it.
TrackAbout customers are able to identify an asset’s location at any time and access data about its contents, maintenance history, who’s handled it, where it’s been, and more.
Inventory audits done right have the potential to save businesses a lot of time, effort, and money, says O’Dell.
Before implementing TrackAbout software, one customer based out of Mexico City, Mexico, always carried out a full audit of their fill plant every month. It was a painstaking task, with the business completely shutting down its facility, usually on a weekend, and insisting all employees come to work to start the count. It was a hugely time-consuming process, with 14 people spending an eight-hour shift, once a month, doing nothing but checking inventory.
Their switch to TrackAbout will completely change the way they operate, continues O’Dell. What is currently a labor-intensive process will no longer be necessary – which will mean significant cost savings for the business.
“Once they've fully implemented serialized tracking, once it's mature, they expect the need for that full audit each month to completely go away,” he says. “Pretty quickly, they’ll be able to instantly check the status of their assets and remove the need for that regular audit and all that effort.”
From a distributor’s perspective, having such a handle on your assets allows for more informed strategic decision making, and ensures you always have enough assets on hand to keep orders flowing and customers happy.
“Knowing you have enough cylinders to serve your customers is a big deal in this business and means you’re not going to be running short and have to switch out to something else,” says O’Dell.
If you always know where your assets are, and what they’re being used for, it’s a win-win.
Set up is simple and careful planning will ensure a smooth transition, says O’Dell. First, think about what needs to be scanned and the information you’d like to capture. It’s important to get everyone onboard and invested in the new system. Keep the team involved and tell them what is required of them, train them, and explain the benefits of effective inventory management.
“Once everything is set up and those initial pain points are out of the way, you literally just need to push a button on your smartphone within the TrackAbout app – it’s that simple,” says O’Dell. “There’s a choice of two ‘audit’ buttons, one that says ‘internal’ and the other ‘external’, depending on whether you want a warehouse count or a customer count. With the customer audit, you’d enter the customer’s name, number, or any identifier, and would start walking around their site scanning every cylinder you see.”
Gas distributors supplying a hospital, for example, should periodically go onsite and conduct an audit of all their cylinders. Given the nature of medical suppliers, these containers will likely not be conveniently in one place but constantly on the move around the facility – being moved between wards, taken on crash carts, used in operating rooms, and so on.
“If you were carrying out a manual count, the only way that you’d know if you’d already counted one of those cylinders was if you’d marked it in some way – maybe by putting a sticker on it,” he says. “The beautiful part of serialization tracking with TrackAbout is you can scan the same asset 15 times, and it doesn’t matter. Each asset is unique, so you can't double count them and get confused. You can trust that TrackAbout collects the data as you scan and, at the end, accurately tells you exactly how many were counted.”
Accurate inventory audits are essential when managing rentals, which are a major part of the gas industry, notes O’Dell. Failing to keep track of your returnable assets means you’re risking revenue. It’s all too easy for balances to be incorrect and, in the majority of cases, a customer has more cylinders than their distributor is aware of – the result of mistakes creeping into the system over a period of time.
Even though you may only be charging a relatively small amount for each gas cylinder, this certainly adds up if you’re talking about larger shipments. Equally, the rental for larger bulk tanks can be quite significant as they may be rented for $1,200-2,000 a month. Once you start to identify those issues, the software will quickly pay for itself, adds O’Dell.
Audits can also ensure safety and compliance – vital when storing and transporting gas and potentially hazardous chemicals. Transparency and traceability are key. Being able to track a container based on what it held within it is critical to prevent the mixing of certain products.
Digitized inventory management allows for a vast amount of valuable data to be collected, fed into systems and processes, and easily shared amongst teams. There’s also less physical paperwork to manage and store – and therefore fewer problems with illegible handwriting, transposed digits in lot numbers, and manual errors. A software solution also provides instant access to data files whenever you need them and wherever you are.
Given the fast-paced, ever-changing market environment and the need to keep costs low and customers happy, having an effective inventory management system is key to a business staying on top of its assets and product flows.
If you'd like to learn more about how effectively managing returnable assets can help boost business efficiency, increase productivity, and reduce regulatory risk, reach out to our sales team today at sales@trackabout.com.