Information systems and technology in engineering and business
Any successful operating company takes care of the correct assessment of the prospective customers who buy products of company and of the correct assessment of the needs of its own production in material resources.
The ideal situation – all resources are purchased simultaneously, volume resources corresponded to the production program and all products for sale are sold immediately.
This ideal case is not possible due to the presence of various random influences. Accounting for the availability of material resources, their movement, account of random factors in a large enterprise is a cumbersome and difficult task.
Inventory management – is an optimization of inventories of manufactured goods, work in progress, raw materials and other activities for the purpose of reduction of costs of storage. Effective inventory management allows to satisfy or exceed consumer expectations.
The goods are passed the production cycle (beginning from raw materials and finishing with final products) before they will be finished and get to the final consumer. Any specialist does not undertake a responsibility to say how many products will be sold in next month, because the situation in the market has unpredictable character.
Needs for the inventories will be reduced to zero, if production process would function as single conveyor. In real life it does not occur.
Creation of inventories is always related with additional financial expenses.
Costs determined by creation reserve products can be divided into the costs connected with purchase, delivery and content of inventories. These costs can be broken into several groups:
A lack of necessary inventory quantity can lead to the following form of losses:
The company shall also consider the next following factors:
So, the modern entity faces a number of the accounting and calculation tasks connected with providing optimum inventory quantities, and obtaining at the expense of this surplus of profit. Such tasks solve only using the computerized systems with modern development tools and implementations of mathematical models and intellectual methods.
Relevance of this work is that management in the modern market conditions is not possible without use of modern automated means of accounting, control and management.
The purpose of the job is to develop a computerized inventory management subsystem for food company with raw materials taking into account the risks of production and procurement.
Subsystem can allow:
To achieve this goal it is necessary to solve the following tasks:
The object of the work is a food company with large volume of production.
The subject of the work is the organization of inventory management in the enterprise.
The methodological basis of the work were the scientific methods of research - methods of system analysis, simulation methods of mathematical modeling, forecasting methods.
The theoretical basis of the work amounted works of scientists in the fields of management accounting and computer modeling, such as Bushueva L.I., Portnov K.V., Korneev D.S. and Irina Chuchueva.
Proposed scientific novelty is:
For experimental evaluation of the theoretical results and future studies, we plan to develop raw material inventory management subsystem with the following functions:
When the enterprise is planning its work (for example, for the next month) it is necessary to make a guess how many products the company will be able to implement in the period of the plan. Next, schedules of procurement of raw materials and production plans makes on basis by this forecast.
Thus, the prediction is the main task in planning. Forecasting based on time series analysis suggests that there is a change in the volume of sales may be used to determine this indicator in subsequent periods [2].
Next, we performed the primary analysis of baseline data, during which we detected the presence of the trend and seasonal components (figure 1). The time series is random and has a seasonal trend in 12 months.
Figure 1 – Sales schedule (2012-2013 years)
There are many methods of forecasting. The most popular methods are:
We observed how the values of forecasting method parameters impacted on the accuracy of the resulting plan. It has also analyzed the impact on the accuracy of the forecast number of months for which the forecast is carried out.
Elman neural network was selected to predict the values after analysis (figure 2), because it gives the smallest value of the forecast error [2]. Elman neural network gives the value of error which does not exceed 5%, when forecasting for 3 months ahead.
Figure 2 – Elman neural network scheme
(animation: 7 frames, 7 cycles of repeating, size 300х173, 10.7 kilobytes)
The selected prediction method will be used to determine the volume of sales on the basis of the data for previous periods.
Every company is faced with the challenges associated with ensuring optimal inventory volumes. The employees of enterprises must analyze a lot of information and perform is not a small number of the calculations for ensuring optimal inventory volumes. So, if the company makes large volumes of production, it uses the computer systems to plan resource requirements.
The most popular foreign developments are:
Microsoft Dynamics AX (Axapta) – multifunctional ERP-system for enterprise resource planning [4].
Axapta provides the following features:
BAAN – complex systems for enterprise resource planning. The system consists of functional modules and each module can operate autonomously. The module «BAAN production" is responds for information about the raw material and analysis this information. This module provides control of the most of production processes, as well as help to organize the production process itself. The module has an ability to determine the needed volume of raw materials, depending on the volume of available stock. BAAN suitable for use companies of all types of industry [5].
Oracle E-Business Suite provides the ability to automate production planning and logistics management processes at various levels, including group companies. This system also consists of several modules. The modules "Planning of product", "Recipe management" and "Production management and control of operations», which work with information about the raw materials. Oracle Application supports the coordinated management of information about technological processes of production, provides support for a unified raw guides and recipes. Also, the system provides an optimization modeling capabilities for the calculation and selection of the optimal production plan option [6].
RS-Balance 3 is a modern business process management system that is suitable for business enterprises of various industries and sizes. It includes functionality for management and financial accounting, accounting of the movement cash, process management of sales and purchases, formation of analytical accounting in various sections (for the enterprise and for individual units).
Now market of automation systems management is at a high level in Ukraine. Recently, customers prefer specialized solutions and use of the individual modules [7].
SAP ERP enterprise resource management system (product of the Ukrainian company "Blitz-Inform") provides the means for financial and management accounting, human resource management, operations and service departments [8].
Module management and material flows (MM) responsible for work with the data about raw material. Using this module you can make operations of accounting materials in warehouses, their evaluation, accounting inventories and plan material requirements planning.
Solaris SoftLab – another developer of the inventory management systems. Corporate information system SOLARIS ERP is a full-featured system that allows in a single information space to perform standard and specialized business management problem [9]. This system is focused on Russian enterprises. The system is divided into a number of subsystems in the dependencies of the performed functions.
The process control system (Manufacturing Execution System) will help to organize the rapid exchange of information on the availability and distribution of raw materials and semi-manufactured products of the important interdepartmental processes. The system will help to coordinate, synchronize and analyze the production process. Also, this system has an ability to exchange data with other products of ERP-LAB company [10].
Researches of students of Donetsk National Technical University on topics close of this master's work are:
Development of computer subsystems inventory management of raw materials;
Simulation of risk structure of the enterprise;
Inventory management in the enterprise;
Risk management of business enterprises;
Inventory management system simulation.
Existing systems for resource requirements planning require big capital investments. Selection of the required modules should be very accurate. Also the possibility of taking into account the risks arising during the procurement of raw is realized partially (or fully) in these systems.
The analysis of existing systems and developments of raw materials to control the company were carried out in the master's work. It concludes also methods of sales forecasting and methods for determining the optimal sales volume and schedules of raw material procurement in the food industry were analyzed.
The main prerequisites for the development of the subsystem is an existing systems focuses on the accounting and insufficiently elaborated aspects of planning and forecasting.
At the moment of writing the abstract, the master's work has not been finished yet. You will be able to see the work after it will be in the final stages by December 2016.
