As a supervisor in a manufacturing company, it is your job to look for ways to cut overhead costs without reducing employee productivity. One of the most efficient ways to do this is by considering your inventory management system. Do your employees have to rummage through a supply closet looking for gloves? Are they spending precious minutes searching a bin in order to find safety glasses? If so, you are wasting time and money that can be easily resolved with an efficient production floor management system.
Inventory management systems, such as Vend Safety from Intelligent Dispensing Solutions, determine how and when an employee accesses an item. In order for an employee to access a safety mask, for example, they must first swipe their employee ID card. Then, their item will be dispensed to them and it will be detailed for you in a report. Additionally, it can be set up in such a way that employees must enter a PIN number or even through biometrics. This set of safety precautions saves you money through controlled production floor inventory management.
Vend Safety allows for more accurate inventory management. It eliminates the need to spend countless hours tallying the number of face masks or gloves you have on hand. Instead, administrators are able to track who accessed what item(s), when they accessed the item(s) and the quantity of the item they accessed. This chain of custody is critical when identifying and mitigating risks in a crisis situation, as well as is useful on an inventory management basis during normal operating circumstances.
iQ Technology, Vend Safety’s proprietary software, saves you time by cutting down on inventory management. Eliminate the hours spent on counting inventory and organizing your supply closet. iQ Technology has reporting that details inventory information for you. This eliminates wasting money on unnecessary supplies and allows you to reallocate your time to something more important.
“The integration of IDS’ iQ Technology software with our existing point-of-sale (POS) system drives the success of our 300 machines healthy vending program. Plus, the software’s real-time reporting and alerts allow us to manage the program efficiently and effectively,” states Julie Hedine, Director of Food and Nutrition Services at Pasco County School District.
In addition to offering automatic dispensing solutions, many companies are looking into offering personal protective equipment to supply to companies to stock their equipment. Offering both dispensing equipment and the PPE supplies to stock them moves the responsibility of maintaining your equipment and supplies from you, back to us. It reduces the time you spend with PPE replenishment.
Inventory management solutions can come in the form of an automatic supply dispenser or a supply locker. Supply dispensers allow employees to increase productivity and reduce employee downtime by spreading out your storage to your point of use. They ensure your team has exactly what they need, when and where they need it. Supply lockers provide secure accountability for reusable assets and consumable products. Single and multiple item dispense, check-in/check-out, loan periods and asset management are all possible with supply lockers.
Supply dispensers are useful for products of varying shapes and sizes. They are especially useful for one-time-use products or products that should not be shared amongst employees, such as safety glasses and face masks. Trays within the dispenser can be configured to provide employees with large items, such as boxes of alcohol wipes, to something small, such as earplugs.
For items of various shapes and sizes that need to be returned for others to use, such as tools, you may find a supply locker to be more useful. Supply lockers are adjustable and can be made to have anywhere from 3 compartments to up to 22 compartments. Additionally, select supply lockers include interior lighting and chargers within each compartment. This allows your employees to recharge tools, if necessary before someone else needs to use them. Both supply dispensers and supply lockers can be attached, with the help of a satellite supply locker.
“Our vending machines are great and perform like they’re brand new,” says Daniel Bolens, Desktop Services Specialist at JAMF Software. “IDS is the perfect solution and working with them is a very positive experience. We evaluated other suppliers and IDS had the best technological solution. The machines are embraced by the team and popular in the office.”
Implementing an inventory management system in your manufacturing company allows you to cut back on time and money spent organizing supply closets and ensuring your employees are not hoarding supplies. Whether you are on the lookout for supply dispensers, supply lockers or a combination of both, Intelligent Dispensing Solutions has an inventory management solution to help cut overhead costs within your manufacturing company.
For more information about Vend Safety, or any other IDS products, give us a call at 1-877-771-4446.
