Inventory

The inventory module of Infor MES enables users to create and manage various materials. These materials include raw materials, semi-finished goods, and finished goods.

Stock in the factory is displayed in real-time. MES manages the state, location, and quantity of all inventory in stock.

Inventory can be further split, merged, sorted, or packed if required.

Combining inventory with other MES functionality enables full traceability, inventory inspections, and logistics management.

MES integrates with ERP to report new created inventory and other inventory based transactions. ERP is kept aligned with the real-time information in MES.

Key Features

These are the key benefits of the inventory capability of MES:

  • Receive inventory into the factory
  • Create inventory for a production run and print labels
  • Transform existing inventor by splitting, merging, sorting, and so on
  • Optionally automatically generate unique lot numbers in user defined formats
  • Record production information for traceability
  • Use inventory production figures to feed into OEE calculations
  • Pack and unpack inventory
  • Load and unload inventory into containers
  • Manage stock levels
  • Handle inventory movements and maintain a full location history
  • Record the state history for all inventory, and record reasons for state changes
  • Enable for consumption further down the manufacturing process
  • Perform quality checks on inventory, when using the quality module
  • Synchronize seamlessly with ERP and warehouse systems

Benefits

Traceability
  • Review inventory created in a specified time frame, on a specific machine, for a given production run.
  • Combine with inventory consumption functionality for full two-way traceability, up and down the tree.
  • Support investigation into customer complaints or recalls.
Usability
  • Use scanners or RFID to scan barcodes directly in MES.
  • Perform all inventory transactions on mobile scanners, mobiles, and tablets.
  • Packed inventory is handled as a single unit, which means that moving the parent inventory pack also moves all child packs.
  • Pick and prepare kits of inventory to be delivered to production.
Reduce costs
  • Reduce work in progress (WIP) stock through accurate inventory management.
  • Manage and test the quality of inventory to identify issues early and reduce customer complaints.
  • Save time investigating customer complaints. The full production, pallet, and traceability information is instantly available to review.
  • Evaluate historic data for continuous improvement, for example, by analyzing the top 10 scrap reasons.
Stock control
  • Implement improved control of inventory at a lot level.
  • Full visibility of all stock, including the status, location, and quantity of materials.
Quality control
  • Manage inventory isolation and release inventory correctly.
  • Perform inspections on received inventory by validating the quality of materials sent by suppliers.
  • Perform inspections on created inventory, including visual inspections.
  • Block current and previous inventory based on the results of a quality check.
ERP connectivity
  • Inventory managed in MES is isolated from an ERP outage.
  • Use the act of creating inventory to perform actions such as back-flushing in ERP systems.
  • Automatically synchronize stock levels between MES and ERP.

Some benefits are only available when combined with functionality in other modules.