Introduction
Technology is at the center of all disruption today and the current market landscape is changing every day. This means we will experience more disruptions in the years to come.
Businesses today seek ways to improve their efficiency and reduce costs at the same time. This paves the way for automation of manual tasks to enhance productivity of teams while making processes error free. Aftermarket inventory management often poses a variety of challenges for businesses as there are many activities dependent on the management of inventory. Technology has made its entry in this regard through IoT in aftermarket inventory management. Tasks such as parts ordering, sales forecasting, and getting real-time insights into the inventory are performed with ease through this technology in aftermarket software.
Businesses today are investing in aftermarket software such as IoT in aftermarket inventory management systems that help OEMs and manufacturers with managing inventory.
Let us now see how exactly IoT is making a difference in aftermarket inventory management.
Traditional Inventory Management
Every OEM and manufacturer needs to have an inventory of parts and components that make up or contribute to building a complete product. In the traditional way, it was a challenge for manufacturers to manage their inventories. There was no inventory management software back then and everything was required to be done manually! Imagine the time that was invested in managing this complicated process of managing the inventory. Not just time, it also accounted for dedicated workforce that would only be engaged in this. Downtime planning was yet another humongous task to be executed and it required collaboration from multiple teams. There were other challenges like excessive and low inventory that required meticulous calculations to understand the optimum inventory levels.
With passing time and introduction of improved methods, these processes went through rigorous enhancements until there were applications adopted which provided full transparency and optimum inventory management methods.
The Modern Landscape of Aftermarket Inventory Management
With advancements in technology and the advent of systems and applications to manage tasks, aftermarket inventory management improved drastically. There were aftermarket software solutions adopted to perform activities which required human intervention before. This has further improved especially with technologies like IoT (Internet of Things), which has brought about automation and innovation with options of scalability. These solutions are now offered in a single inventory management software, which enhances productivity and optimizes the operations behind the cumbersome aftermarket inventory management.
Internet of Things in Aftermarket Inventory Management
Businesses today are utilizing the advantage of cutting-edge technology to identify scope of improvement in various business functions and domains. Similarly, in the aftermarket, many businesses are deploying IoT to manage their inventory.
There are aftermarket inventory management software helping companies with efficient and streamlined inventory management. By utilizing IoT and integrating sensors to their products, there is a seamless exchange of data through the internet which enables companies to get real-time insights into the inventory data. This data can further be utilized for predictive maintenance and automation, and predictive analytics.
Let us now see how is the aftermarket inventory management benefitting from IoT:
Real-time Tracking of Inventory:
Inventory items are tagged with RFID tags, barcode scanners, and GPS trackers which help with real-time tracking. Through these tags and scanners, companies can track the movement of products throughout the supply chain and gain deep insights on real-time status of the supply chain. This eliminates the traditional manual tracking techniques used and allows for automation and transparency. Such innovative measures, when employed at scale, can help companies with status of inventory data, streamline the operations, enhance operational efficiency, and most importantly, reduce costs.
Automated Collection of Data:
IoT if often coupled with big data to improve the tracking and enhance warehouse operations. The sensors attached to the inventory give detailed information not just about the status but consumer behavior, the ordering cycle of these products and so on. These insights are utilized to improve the warehouse operations significantly. When there are products in the aftermarket inventory management which are perishable in nature, the quality and originality of such products have to be maintained. This prevents any kind of damage that might be caused to the inventory items and customers are provided with products with the highest quality.
Predictive Analytics:
IoT has numerous applications in today’s business landscape but, predictive analytics has probably the greatest number of applications. The data collected from the IoT sensors and tags shed light on the real-time status of products in the aftermarket inventory management. With multiple types of data collected, each data point can give valuable insight to form an efficient inventory management system. This can also help analyze the performance of suppliers and identify areas of improvement for the manufacturer. In a similar way, the dealer performance can also be tracked with ease. This data can help businesses make informed decisions and identify trends, perform a behavior analysis of each product, and also use predictive analytics for better warehouse operations.
Warehouse Management:
As we have explored in the previous sections on how IoT helps improve the warehouse operations and provides detailed insights on the warehouse management. IoT in aftermarket inventory management also utilizes smart shelves which provide data on how long the product has been on a shelf. These shelves are called smart shelves for obvious reasons. Many inventory management systems provide such functionality where a systematic storing of items is utilized. There are machine learning applications as well that help in arranging the products as per the demand.
Conclusion
We have seen now how there are a plethora of applications of IoT in aftermarket inventory management. Today, there are plenty of software and applications that are redefining the traditional methods of inventory management. IoT in aftermarket Inventory Management solution offers optimized operations with real-time data. That’s why companies should consider outsourcing your tedious tasks to IoT. That even helps you reduce lead time, and avoid hidden costs. Overall, IoT in Inventory Management brings greater tracking, and quality management, on inventory.
Intellinet Systems is a leader in adopting technology to transform business operations and streamline functions in a strategic manner. We, at Intellinet, are your partners in growth and can build customisable solutions tailored to your requirements.
Talk to us or arrange a demo of our products.
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