Digital Production Management for Warehouse-Driven Businesses

If your company manufactures finished goods, you need to tie your shoes tightly and keep a cool head from the ordering of raw materials to sending off the sales order. Your production can encounter many bumps along the way. Without solid streamlining between purchases, inventory management, the assembly of raw materials, and the execution of production orders, you will face production halts and delivery delays. Therefore, effective production management is crucial for your business.

Rackbeat’s digital warehouse system offers you production management that unites all links in your production chain. Our production management includes the ability to create bill of materials, access overviews of your production orders, receive direct updates on the inventory of raw materials, and much more. You can test our production management for free for 14 days without any commitment.

Rackbeat's Inventory Management System Provides the Key Functions for Efficient Production Management

With Rackbeat’s production management, you maintain the pace and rhythm from start to finish. We believe that effective production management should cover several phases of production: planning, manufacturing, order processing, and the recall of raw materials. And in all four phases, our warehouse system has tailored functions ready for you, so you don’t have to worry about production stops or disappointed customers. Here’s how it can be outlined:

In the planning phase

Rackbeat helps you ensure that you have enough raw materials ready to start manufacturing finished goods. Your inventory overview is automatically updated every time a sale is registered. At the same time, you have the option to attach a minimum inventory level for your raw materials, so the system notifies you when it’s time to reorder goods. And you can place an order with your supplier directly from Rackbeat’s purchasing tab.

During production

The ability to create bill of materials gives you the recipes for your finished goods right at hand, thereby streamlining your production. A bill of materials includes an overview of all the components you need, the status of their inventory, the total and individual component’s cost price, units’ weight, size, and location. Thus, all relevant employees have access to the essential information for the manufacturing phase to proceed efficiently.

During production (continued)

You will encounter that components may break or the expiration date of raw materials may pass. This needs to be updated quickly, so the inventory and accounting are accurate. Here, Rackbeat can streamline the registration of the loss when it comes to simple waste. Simple waste refers to the unintended consumption of materials consisting of whole units or quantities. For example, a wheel or a bicycle handlebar. If you work with more complex waste, i.e., loss in liters, centimeters, grams, etc., it’s recommended to use a formula in a spreadsheet to calculate the loss.

When orders are processed

As soon as an order from a customer is manually or automatically registered, it’s time to start processing the production order. Here, Rackbeat gives you a complete overview of all ongoing and completed production orders – with order numbers, bill of materials, customers, the employee responsible for the production, and the production status. You will also be able to make a purchase from your production overview if raw materials are missing, and you can pick, pack, invoice, and send the order with a few clicks.

If an order needs to be recalled

You may discover faults in the raw materials – after a customer has received a finished product from your company. Here, you need to quickly trace where the individual raw materials from faulty batches are located. Here, Rackbeat’s batch or serial number management, which you access in the “reporting tab” under Batch Control and Serial Numbers, gives you traceability on your raw materials.

You can see when you have received a batch, how many productions raw materials from a given batch have been used in, and who has received goods from a batch.

Thus, Rackbeat’s production management covers you all the way from the planning of production to a potential recall of your production orders.

Why You Should Use an Inventory System for Your Production Planning

If you choose to consolidate your entire production flow in an inventory management system instead of spreadsheets, you optimize the throughput time in your manufacturing. This means that you can quickly identify deviations and delays in your manufacturing, avoiding situations where minor errors become very costly.

By having a constantly updated overview of your manufacturing, you will never produce more than needed. At the same time, you will be notified every time you need to make new finished goods. If an order is placed for an item not currently in stock, Rackbeat alerts you that a purchase is necessary to fulfill the order. You will therefore find many advantages to choosing an inventory management system over a spreadsheet for your manufacturing, such as:

Savings on man-hours spent maintaining the spreadsheet, as an inventory management system automates the registration of your stock movements

Streamlining of production, as relevant employees can have a comprehensive overview of manufacturing without having to struggle with spreadsheet formulas

Assistance in figuring out how to make the most of your production capacity, as you can generate reports on sales, production orders and purchases

The option to integrate manufacturing with the warehouse, shipping, accounting system, online store, etc., so you don't have to do double or triple work to update all your systems

Let's Talk About Your Manufacturing Business

If you’d like to hear how Rackbeat’s production management can help your specific business, we encourage you to book a presentation of the warehouse system with one of our product specialists. All workflows are unique, and we’d love to explain and show you where we can help you strengthen your production.