DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A COMPUTERISED INVENTORY SYSTEM

ABSTRACT

This project work is meant to design an automated inventory control system for Guinness Nigeria Plc. According to Kower (2011), who defined inventory as “an asset that is owned by a business that has the express purpose of being sold to a customer. This includes items sold to end customers or distributors. It includes raw materials, and finished goods. The need for this automated system was to solve the problems that were associated with the manual system of inventory control in the company; some of these problems were traced to strenuous paper work and calculation in taking down stock after and during sales or purchase of new products or raw materials. In other to solve this problem, there was an analysis that was carried out on the old system so as to know how to automate the new system to perform more than the conventional system that was used in the company. From the analysis, the system will be designed to achieve the following: Enable the management to get the information about stock levels of various items in the least possible time, Provides a kind of inventory system that can link to sales and accounting departments. The new system was designed with Microsoft visual basic 6.0 

CHAPTER ONE

1.0    INTRODUCTION

1.1    BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

          Kower (2011) defined inventory as “an asset that is owned by a business that has the express purpose of being sold to a customer. This includes items sold to end customers or distributors. It includes raw materials, and finished goods. The management of inventory is a key concern of all businesses. Inventory generally refers to the materials in stock. It is also called the idle resource of an enterprise. Inventories represent those items which are either stocked for sale or they are in the process of manufacturing or they are in the form of materials, which are yet to be utilised. The interval between receiving the purchased parts and transforming them into final products varies from industries to industries depending upon the cycle time of manufacture. It is, therefore, necessary to hold inventories of various kinds to act as a buffer between supply and demand for efficient operation of the system. Thus, an effective control on inventory is a must for smooth and efficient running of the production cycle with least interruptions in companies using Guinness Nigeria Plc as case study.      

          Spencer (2000) defined inventory as the stock of goods that business firm has no band including raw materials suppliers and finished goals.

          Inventory refers to the goods kept by a firm or an organization that are either used in production kept for resale, or in the process of being manufactured to the finished products.

          To the entire three definitions, inventory means money tied up in property that is intended to sale or used in merchandising concern, the inventory will be made up mostly of finished goods but in a manufacturing environment, a major part of the inventory was made up of raw materials and goods that have been particularly processed. The former belongs to raw materials inventory while the later one is classified as work in process inventory. There are other items, which though used up in the production process so does not form part of the final product. Examples are lubricants, pencil etc. are called supplies.

          There are some advantages to be derived from keeping large inventory. A good inventory system is cost associated with this: a good inventory system should have an effective way of determining the acceptable trade off to enhance the profitability of the firm.

 These method and term relating inventory are discussed in chapter two.

1.2     STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

          In other to carry out the process of adequate inventory control system stock of various products is usually kept. Keeping and controlling of inventory is a primary duty of the store department with inputs from the sales and purchasing departments.

          Guinness Nigeria Plc is still at a development phase of its system including the inventory system to meet up with the current time. The inventory system being used currently is wholly manual and involves a lot of paper work and calculation, which hopefully will be standardized with time.

          The present system is only effective to some extent and may not stand the test of time as the company goes into selling and buying of products or other accessories. This will meet new stock of product to be kept. Complex sales are in fact flexible, dynamic and efficient inventory system as outlined above requires electronic data processing to implement. The computer provides the solution to such problem.

1.3     OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

          The main objective of this study is to device and design a computer based inventory control system, which will among other things.

i.        Enable the management to get the information about stock levels of various items in the least possible time.

ii.       Ensure that the quality information in (i) above is maintained

iii.      Provides a kind of inventory system that can link to sales and accounting departments.

iv.      Has an in-built learning system on re-order level to avoid expenses stock out.

v.       Computer system should be used to replace the manual process of handling information, so as to ensure that information will be always accurate.

1.4    SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

          All businesses rely on inventory control systems to be able to run their business. Inventory control systems play this significant role by accounting for all goods or products. It also shows where a particular item is in the flow of sales, whether it be in a warehouse or on a store shelf.

Below is some of the significance of the research work

       I.            The system will assist management in making important business decisions.

    II.            To design an effective and accurate record keeping techniques in terms of the stock of Guinness products.

1.5     SCOPE OF THE STUDY

          Sales and accounting inventory system are all embarking in nature, however, all the areas can not be covered at once the work is therefore limited in the computerization of items or products inventory and monitoring of machinery, products and equipment in Guinness Nigeria Plc.

1.6     DEFINITION OF TERMS

STOCK:    This is the total value of money, equipment building etc. of a business company

INVENTORS:     A person or organization that uses money to buy share or property develops a business enterprise in order to make profit.

ORGANIZATION:      This is the state or condition of being organized

PROGRAM:       These are series of instructions in code that control the operation of the computer

HARDWARE:    These are the entire physical device found in the computer system

SOFTWARE:      This is a term used to describe all the various programs that may be used in a computer system together with their associated documentation

DATA PROCESSING:          It is the collection and manipulation of item of data to produce meaningful information.