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Overview

Factory Superstar is built on the foundation that things in any manufacturer's inventory can be either:

  • Purchased from a supplier (we call this a 'bought' item)
  • Made in-house (a 'made' item).

This may seem simple, but is the basis on which the system works. Remember what we mean by 'bought' and 'made' items when you're reading through this documentation.

Stock Components​

Overview​

When you click Inventory, it takes you to the Stock Components index.

This is your inventory. It is everything you have and has been in stock (e.g. might need to be replenished). It contains both 'bought' and 'made' items.

By default, the items are grouped by Category (you can change this to Location using the filters at the top).

For each component, it shows:

  • The category
  • If the item is bought or made
  • If the component is for sale or not
  • The component name
  • How many 'units' each component contains (e.g. each box of screws holds 5000 screws, or each plank of wood has 240 cm)

There are also 5 columns under the heading 'Quantity'. These are important. They are:

  • In Stock. This is the quantity of that component that you actually have in stock.
  • Earmarked. This is the quantity of that component that has been 'earmarked' or 'allocated' to a Production or Sales Order. Say you have 15x Cakes in stock. A customer then buys 10x Cakes. You have 15x Cakes in stock, and 10x Earmarked.
  • Ordered. This is the quantity of that component that has been 'ordered'. If it's a 'bought' item, it means there is a Purchase Order for the item, so some will arrive soon. If it's a 'made' item 'ordered' means there's a Production Order for that item, so more will be created soon.
  • Net. The 'net' stock is: In Stock quantity minus the Earmarked quantity, plus the Ordered quantity. It's important. Your Net quantity can be negative. If you have 10x Cakes (In Stock = 10), have a Production Order for 5x more Cakes (Ordered = 5), but someone has ordered 20x Cakes (Earmarked = 20) then you have a Net quantity of negative 5x Cakes. Better get into that kitchen.
  • Min. Stock. This is the minimum stock level you allow for the item. So if you always want to have a minimum of 10x Cakes in stock, this would be 10. The In Stock and Net Stock columns are highlighted based on this minimum stock level - if they are above the minimum stock level they'll be green, equal to the minimum stock they'll be yellow, and below minimum stock red, so you can see at a glance what you need to address.

Adjusting​

Under the heading 'Adjust', each item has a box where you can put a number. At the very bottom of the page under this 'Adjust' column, you'll see several buttons:

  • Change Min. Stock. This adjusts the 'Min Stock' value for any items where you enter a number for 'adjust'. Note that if you set Min Stock to -1 it will remove the Minimum Stock value altogether for the item.
  • Stock Count. This adjusts the 'In Stock' quantities for the items where a value has been inserted. See below for info.
  • Add to Re-Order. This adds the items with a value to your 'shopping basket', with the value you use for adjust used as the quantity.

So, you enter a number for whichever parameter you want to modify and click one of these buttons. It becomes extremely simple to manage your stock.

tip

Use the 'tab' â­¾ key on your keyboard to quickly go from one 'adjust' box to the next.

Filtering​

Note the filter bar at the top of the page. You can filter by:

  • Category / Location. Day-to-day, it'll probably be easier to view your stock by 'Category' rather than 'Location'. However, when it comes to taking stock counts we recommend you change it to location (see Stock Taking).
  • Primary / Secondary
  • Bought / Made
  • Minimum Stock Count
  • If the net stock is less than, or greater than the minimum stock.

Stock Taking​

No matter how clever your software is at tracking inventory, it's good practice to do regular stock counts (say at the end of every month).

tip

There are a number of reasons to do a stock count:

  • When using Factory Superstar, when you've just made a new Definition it gives feedback on how accurately it is set-up. You can use stock counts to optimise your Definitions. If your Definitions are accurate then Factory Superstar can calculate more accurate costs. It also means there's less chance of you getting any surprises regarding stock quantities when you go to start producing an important order.

  • Let's say your Definition is set up exactly the way it should be: You make Chairs. Each Chair needs 300 cm of bubble wrap. At the end of a period you've produced 10x Chairs, so you should have used 3000 cm of bubble wrap. But you do a stock count and you've actually used 10,000 cm. You need to investigate:

    • Are your team just using too much bubble wrap? If so, tell them how much they need to use.
    • Is someone taking bubble wrap without permission?

    The opposite is also valuable - you should have used 3000 cm, but you've used 1000 cm. Are more products going to get damaged in transit because they're inadequately packaged?

  • When your stock count is accurate, you can go to Analysis->Current Inventory Value. This shows you the current value of your stock (broken into labour and material costs). You can only know how much profit you've made in a period if you know exactly how much the value of your stock changed between the start of that period and the next.

We've designed Factory Superstar to be as simple as possible to take a stock count. Here's how we do it:

  1. Go to Inventory
  2. Click the 'Location' filter. This means that everything is organised by location - much easier when going around counting things.
  3. Print out the inventory pages (yes, using old-fashioned paper). You'll notice that they're in a nice format for printing - we thought of that too :) Ok, so you don't have to print them... but we find it is quicker.
  4. Go round with your paper inventory and a clipboard and count your stock.
  5. Come back to Factory Superstar, type in your numbers in the 'adjust' boxes. Remember you can use the 'tab' â­¾ key on your keyboard to quickly go from one box to the next.
  6. Click 'Stock Count'.
  7. Done.