Follow our example of a blacklight flashlight manufacturer and see how you can set yourself up for growth by using this warehouse management system for small businesses.
Let’s say your company is the go-to for fashion keychain flashlights. When your shop floor employees go to any hardware store or outdoor gear retailer across the nation, they smile when they spy their handiwork displayed in a small box right near the cash register.
Recently, you’ve expanded your offerings. Now, you’re making keychain blacklight flashlights, which means you need to build up your inventory and your employees’ skillset.
MobileManage is a warehouse management system for small businesses that use the Made2Manage® ERP. It can help keep you and your employees organized and on track as your company continues to grow.
To see how MobileManage works, let’s track the end-to-end journey of just one of your new blacklight flashlights.
Steps for Handling a New Manufactured Good
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Receiving
First, before you can create a single blacklight flashlight, you need to order your blacklight LED bulbs and some stickers warning consumers not to look at the UV bulbs.
MobileManage’s eReceipt can help. When your initial shipments arrive, eReceipt empowers your receiving team to quickly and intuitively locate POs, receive orders, print labels, and put away items.
When your receiving team sees the shipments from unfamiliar new vendors, they can use MobileManage to look up and verify the POs by vendor instantly — and they’ll see any essential memos attached to each order as well. In this case, when your Procurement Specialist, Anna, made the order, she had included the memo, “Need new physical location set up for these.”
Once the order is verified and accepted, the bulbs and stickers will be added to your Made2Manage® inventory immediately. And Sunil in Receiving will be able to follow the solution’s optional staging / put-away methodology to set up each item’s new physical location.
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Production
Next, it’s time to use your new materials. Now that you have the bulbs and warning stickers, your team can start building up your safety inventory of blacklight flashlights.
Luis on your shop floor will be putting together the first round with the help of MobileManage’s eDispatch solution. It delivers all of his cell / workcenter information on one easy-to-read screen. He’ll get all the information he needs to pick the materials and assemble the flashlight, including electronic work instructions, YouTube videos, PDFs, and forms.
He’ll also receive job prioritization information, a simplified clock-on/off function, and real-time feedback on his work efficiency, so he’s inspired to beat his previous times for each new flashlight he assembles. Of course, as each flashlight is finished, MobileManage will update your Made2Manage® inventory numbers in real time.
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Order Fulfillment
Luis finished that first batch of blacklight flashlights just in time! The first order arrived immediately after the new physical location of those flashlights was set up. This means now we return to Sunil, who must pick, pack, and ship the order.
And here —you guessed it— MobileManage’s flexible warehouse management system for small businesses can help again. This time, ePick and eShip will make Sunil’s order fulfillment task faster and easier.
ePick provides digital picking lists, including up-to-the-moment availability, location, and lot / serial number information. As he picks each flashlight, all Sunil has to do is scan the item’s QR code and picking location, and enter a quantity. MobileManage automatically takes care of all the inventory updates from there — in real time, of course.
It’s great that you already have an order for your new blacklight keychain flashlights. Your Sales team is doing a good job getting the word out. However, that new flashlight order is part of a larger order of your tried-and-true fashion keychain flashlights. Sunil has a lot more to pick, pack, and ship.
eShip helps your front office use custom rules to effectively communicate to Sunil and your other warehouse team members what items to pick and when. eShip will provide them with the information they need to find each item, and it can enhance their picking efficiency by prioritizing the picking locations. Working with one or multiple orders, it will automatically transfer picked flashlights to staging, easing the process of scheduling shipments and preparing shipping labels.
Congratulations, your first blacklight flashlights are now ready to be shipped. A bright future is ahead of you.
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Business Growth
Fast forward a few months. As it turns out, someone made a viral TikTok video about why your keychain blacklight flashlights are essential for travelers, and now it feels like everyone in the world wants one before the holidays.
To capture all those sales, you’re going to need more flashlights on hand.
A good warehouse management system for small businesses should have your growth in mind. That’s why MobileManage’s eMove solution streamlines the process of transferring products to and from various stocking locations. Using eMove, it’s much easier for you to create more space for your blacklight flashlights and their raw materials: just scan the product and location QRs / barcodes for fast, error-free transfers.
eMove also prints inventory labels to save you and your team even more time.
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Time Tracking
Speaking of time, MobileManage helps with that, too. eTime provides a clean, simplified way for your shop floor and warehouse staff to track their time while giving you complete visibility.
A good warehouse management solution should make it easy for your employees to track their time. Why? Because labor hours are critical to your profit margins.
eTime was built to help you optimize your labor hour costs by providing key capabilities such as user efficiency feedback, multiple costing and rate options, and daily scheduling options. This granular data can help you develop more accurate pricing so you can boost your margins and take full advantage of your flashlights’ incredible popularity.
Are You Ready for a Warehouse Management System for Small Businesses?
You don’t need to be a flashlight manufacturer to benefit from MobileManage. Whether your small manufacturing company is planning for strategic growth or needs to optimize labor costs by streamlining warehouse and shop floor operations, MobileManage for your Made2Manage® ERP can assist you.
Ready to learn more? If you have specific questions and you want personalized answers, contact the Made2Manage® experts at PeopleSense. Or you can …
Learn More About MobileManage
Since 2003, PeopleSense has established itself as the definitive ERP and single-source workforce management solution provider for businesses of all sizes throughout the U.S. and Canada, offering consulting for M2M® and Intuitive®, Sage HRMS, time and attendance solutions, Acumatica, and related services and products. PeopleSense provides clients with the peace of mind that comes from working with experienced consultants dedicated to customer service, who are affordably priced with no annual contracts. Reach out to get your business software questions answered.