Stock Alerts and Automated Material Requests in Just In Time Inventory and Make To Order Model

[replaceablehead]

Hi,

Here is our usage case:

We supply and install automotive aftermarket accessories. We operate primarily as a retailer, so we don’t do any manufacturing.

Because our products are vehicle specific and often have unique specifications, we run a just-in-time inventory model for most items and many of our suppliers run on made-to-order models.

So for us it becomes more critical to get good visibility on stock to fill orders. I’m happy enough with the existing method of checking stock quantities, but what would be ideal is a warning if a sales person tries to create an order and the reserved quantity exceeds the combined actual and awaiting quantity.

Does this make sense? In other words, we don’t hold stock, so if a sales person creates an order for which there is no stock either in the warehouse, or on order with a supplier, I would like either a warning, or better yet the automatic creation of a material request.

That’s what I envision.

But surely others run similar Just-In-Time inventories, so how are others handling it? Is it a better idea just to run a report at the end of each day to make sure proper stock quantities have been ordered?

I was actually thinking it would be kind of cool if you could set the auto Re-order Level to -1 for example and allow negative on hand quantities.

[replaceablehead]

I may have once again answered my own question.

It looks like if I set reoder level to 0 and reorder quantity to 1, it should run as a just in time.

Bug in Shortage Quantity?

If you don’t want to keep stock, just set the reorder level to zero and reorder qty to 1. This way you will only see shortage if projected qty is negative. The reorder level is the minimum qty you want to keep in stock. So setting it to 0 means you don’t want to keep any stock, but want to have it reordered if needed (i.e. projected qty is negative).