Handheld and non-Barcoded Inventory

I use new west tech's Mobile suite. It has an item search/lookup function for items without barcodes or for lot matrix items. This solution is live and will tell you if an item is "NOT FOUND". Basically you will do an inventory in the same manner as you scan/ enter an item into your POS. Works great.

Jay

Jas> After a disaster attempting to count inventory on January 2, I have decided

Check out our PIC-ME utility for inventory count:

With it you can use economic data collector (much cheaper than a Pocket-PC device) such as Optimus S/R or ScanPal 2 or similar and import the count data into RMS. It allows to consolidate multiple counts, scan items by their aliaises and also upon importing displays the list of all ILCs not found in the database with their counts for further manual item creating.

It looks like this is a software option to put onto a Windows Mobile device. I have an old PDA that should work. I would need to find an external scanner I guess. Or maybe I should just bite the bullet and buy a professional rugged solution (probably better battery life anyway).

The Mobile Physical Inventory Count module seems like what I need.

On the other hand, what is the benefit compared to just having a laptop and scanner on a stand, which is a "free" solution for me.

I see that the Mobile Manager software is licensed "per handheld." Can I use the handheld in multiple store locations?

Can you give me the rough price of the software? I see the scanners start at about $1000...

I am very close to pulling the trigger on New West Tech's Mobile Manager. It looks like it will do what I need to count inventory on a rolling schedule, plus add line busting as an option with a handheld. I like the lookup features, and it was relatively fast on my old Toshiba e755 PDA.

My only problem is the cost/benefit at this point. It seems like $900 for a Symbol MC50 plus $1200 for the software is a little excessive perhaps. I am considering an ultramobile PC with an SD card scanner or a small laptop with a USB scanner. Either of these options would cost under $1000 total, allow me to use the RMS Store Ops manager free of additional cost, and give me much more other capability than the handheld solution.

It is really worth double the cost to get a little more portability and ruggedness? Maybe, but I am struggling with it. Am I missing other benefits of the handheld solution? Comments appreciated!

By the way, John Hopkins at NWT has been tremendously helpful in answering questions and provides very prompt responses. He puts a very professional face on the company. I can only hope that the after-sales support is that good!

I want to institute a "rolling invnetory" procedure in my stores. One question about this procedure: what happens when an item has a non-zero database quantity, but the physical quantity is zero? It would appear that this item would never get adjusted to zero because you are letting the cart lead the horse (basing your counts on what is physically on the shelf).

Jason, I have been using Mobile suite for over 2 years and it is great. As you have already found out the support side of New West is great. I had an issue with an install after I had to rebuild a machine, New West fantastic with the support. Having said that, you are comfortable with the software the benefits of a hand held are well worth the investment. I receive 100% of my inventory through the hand held. I would be lost without it.I do my cycle inventory every morning prior to the store opening with the hand held. We do price checks using the hand held as well as process all of the returns to vendors using the hand held. We placed an additional wireless access point in our warehouse so that we can take the hand held outside and scan the pallets on a truck while they are being unloaded. We can reconcile the invoice prior to the last pallet taken off of the truck. Our group has 4 stores and all of them are using mobile suites with a hand held device. To us, the productivity gained using the simplicity of walking around with a hand held device far exceeds the cost.

Hope this helps you make your decision.

Jay

Jas> I am very close to pulling the trigger on New West Tech's Mobile Manager. It

Yeah, I am pretty cheap, too, but I want a real industrial class solution to my problem. Serial RS-232 seems like ancient technology to me. I like the real-time connectivity of the Symbol MC50.

I purchased an MC50 on eBay for $475 (arriving today!)

That being said, I am not quite sure that $1200 per device will provide enough value. I intend to try my own hand in developing an Excel application or something to do my data collection. I want to see what functionality the MC50 has out of the box, and how difficult it is to import results to RMS. I still might purchase the Mobile Manager, but I don't want to spend the $1200 if I can develop an acceptable and productive solution for "free."

I assume the MC50 has Pocket Excel preloaded. If so, I can develop my own price lookup application and data collection application. I envision saving my data collection in a Excel file, converting it to .csv and importing into RMS. The application can "lookup" scanned code to ensure they exist in the database.

In life you get what you pay for and rarley is free all that productive.

New West has new pricing for the entire line of Mobility products and the Inventory module is only 395.00 for just that functiinality.

Maybe give it a try as they have trials available for download. It now works in Online and Offline mode with full functionality.

I woudl be happy to provide any additional information if anyone is interested.

Dan King - New West Technologies -

- 503.235.4656

FYI - Version 5.2 Ships this week as well ... ..

Jason,

this is Dan from New West. We have trial software you can test our solution if you like.

I am happy to answer any questions and or assist in your evaluation.

Dan King

503.235.4656

"Jas> It looks like this is a software option to put onto a Windows Mobile device.

I have a followup to my New West Tech Mobile Manager 5.2 experience.

The support and product are excellent. After using it for one day, it is already making a huge impact in our store-to-store transfers and inventory counting. It has a few things I would like to see changed, but overall the solution fit the bill for my company, and it runs seamlessly on a Symbol MC50. I would highly recommend it.

My only complaint is the handling of Lot Matrix items. If you have a lot (which I do) beware of this product. The issue is that the software does not accept scanned or entered barcodes for matrix or lot matrix items. It only accepts ILCs that are in the Item table in RMS. That is a serious problem for some...

For example, if you sell Cola in cans, 6-packs, and cases, your ILCs might be set up like this:

Lot Matrix ILC 123456123456 (also the barcode on the cans) Can ILC 123456123456-1

6-Pack ILC 123456123456-6 Case ILC 123456123456-24

At your POS, when you scan the barcode from one of the cans, which is

075075123456, you get a nice pop up box asking if you are selling a can, 6-pack, or Case. Based on your selection, the POS chooses one of the "sub-ILCs" which are the actual items in the Item table, linked via parent/child relationships.

In Mobile Manager, scanning 075075123456 just brings up an ITEM NOT FOUND message. You have to search for each of the sub-ILCs seperately to add to your inventory count (or transfer order, etc). It adds a lot of time and potential for inaccuracy to the function you are performing.

I believe NWT should modify this product to allow a choice when a matrix item ILC is scanned in the case where there is one barcode for several RMS items that it may represent. I don't think they realized that sometimes it is the actual item ILC that is fake, and not the Matrix or Lot Matrix ILC. The system can work both ways depending on your items and how they are barcoded. It's a classic example of how diffucult the IT guys have it - not knowing all the creative ways in which the end users actually use the product.

Hopefully they will fix it in the one year of maintenance they forced me to purchase! :-)

By the way, Gregory in tech support was extremely patient in listening to the above scenario during a pre-sales call I made, and promised to pass it on to the development team. He also helped resolve my product activation/unlock problem without delay. I can't say enough about the sales and support staff... Hopefully my recomendation will result in an even better product.