Moving inventory through the supply chain is an essential but crucial aspect of an e-commerce business. The flow of inventory can massively impact your business’s overall efficiency. This is why inventory should flow seamlessly from one stage of your supply chain to the next.
In order to optimize your inventory flow, you must first analyze your inventory management process. This includes tracking and restocking inventory.
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Defining Inventory Flow
The term “inventory flow” refers to how a business manages the movement of products through its supply chain. It involves crafting a set structure that is followed to ensure that inventory is physically moved to the next stage of the supply chain process. A smooth inventory flow means fewer delays and mistakes.
Inventory management has multiple tasks involved which include sourcing, storage, stock level monitoring, replenishment, and so much more. Streamlined inventory flow not only ensures that these functions stay afloat, but that they happen efficiently and smoothly to avoid running supply chain operations to a halt.
Storage and Fulfillment
Once inventory is received in the warehouse, businesses will need to strategically store the product to ensure picking at the highest possible efficiency. When inventory is stored using an organized system, or specifically a WMS, it reduces product retrieval time and allows fulfillment and dispatching speeds to become faster.
Warehouse staff will need to retrieve the inventory from its strategically placed location and transport it to a packing station (prepared for shipping). Optimizing this type of automation with Simple Global’s advanced WMS technology can vastly improve efficiency and picking accuracy.
A good inventory flow ensures that your e-commerce operations function seamlessly with minimal delays and disruptions, while boosting overall performances on the order fulfillment side.
Countering Limited Visibility Issues
While inventory is moving through the supply chain, you may lose track of its exact location. As a result, you may experience disruptions in order fulfillment or issues with incomplete shipments. Because of this, an integrated inventory management system (or WMS) can provide you with real-time order statuses and continuously updated and accurate inventory counts.
This enables you to have accurate knowledge of your stock levels and track in-transit inventory – so that your stock replacements are precise and properly located.
A WMS allows for the complete coverage of all your fulfillment and inventory operations. Without proper stock and inventory tracking, you won’t be able to justify operational efficiency or analyze your up-to-date inventory flow.
Conclusions
Optimizing inventory allocation between multiple global fulfillment centers allows for ease of tracking and monitoring. Simple Global’s WMS covers the entire aspect of your backend operations, successfully streamlining the process.
By utilizing our technology and experience, your business will be enhanced by smoother inventory flow, to assist in scaling your business on a global level.