Balancing inventory is just one of many plates manufacturers must keep spinning. Treading the line of supply and demand can be an everyday tightrope walk. So how are top manufacturers rising to the new challenges of inventory management?

Technology.

NetSuite Advanced Inventory, a cloud-native solution, helps manufacturers:

• Tighten control over the full inventory lifecycle across multiple locations.
• Stay organized with serial/lot control on items and bin locations to logically setup your inventory.
• Cut costs for procurement, warehousing, shipping and fulfillment.
• Increase customer satisfaction by eliminating stock-outs and accelerating deliveries.
• Continuously monitor and improve performance with real-time dashboards and analytics.

This cloud-based ERP solution for manufacturers offers an incredible array of possibilities for managing your inventory needs, while also providing the flexibility, visibility, and scalability,your business needs to grow. NetSuite-specific inventory-management features that should be on every manufacturers radar include:

Intelligent Replenishment Control

NetSuite’s intelligent control over inventory replenishment helps you ensure that sufficient stock is on hand to fill orders and avoid overstocking. NetSuite Advanced Inventory also enables you to:

• Dynamically manage item reorder points and preferred stock levels based on average lead time, historical or seasonal-based sales demand and number of days’ supply to stock.
• Reduce lag time with real-time alerts whenever stock falls to predefined thresholds.
• Avoid “stock-outs” to maintain continuity.

Inventory Visibility

Enhance inventory visibility with tracking to manage every stage of the inventory management life cycle to control costs with:

• Matrix item management to stock and sell similar products in various colors, sizes and style combinations and simplify SKU creation and pricing.
• Landed cost allocation according to weight, value or quantity.
• Serialized inventory to track purchases and sales by assigning a serial number to each item.
• Lot management to track the purchase, stock and sale of a group of items by assigning a specific number to the group.
• Bin management to organize and track the exact location of items in stock in your warehouse(s).

Process Management

Streamline your processes with automated workflows and simplified tasks (i.e. less time and effort) for optimized operations:

• Return merchandise authorization where warranty claims can be verified to refund, repair or replace product defects.
• Pick, pack and ship management for high-volume order processing environments.

Optimize Your Management

Cloud ERP solutions like NetSuite have made inventory management far simpler than it once was, but unless you have an in-house NetSuite specialist, it can be a challenge to know if you are running NetSuite to its full, manufacturing potential. No two businesses are alike and the same goes for inventory management. In some instances, “factory settings” may get the job done, but oftentimes it’s customization that offers true optimization.

Manufacturers may need support with customizing and enhancing their reporting dashboards for specific executives and managers and tailoring them to their unique KPIs. The reality is though, many organizations simply don’t have the bandwidth or resources to focus on this business-critical technology. That’s why many companies partner with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) to help them make the most of this vital IT.

An MSP has the expertise (and time) to focus on your NetSuite solution, making certain it’s doing everything it can to help your company achieve its goals. You can learn more about getting your NetSuite solution up to manufacturing speed in this complimentary eBook:

And get started finding the right MSP solution for your business today with a free 15-minute consultation: