Many potential users of software, purporting to resolve issues arising in this site, will have reservations about systems generally not living up to expectation. We entirely understand that sentiment, because terms like ‘Stock Control’ can mean many things to many people. ERP users will, quite legitimately, claim their system covers the topic, while accepting that shortages do occur rather too frequently and that their overall inventories are excessively high. This is really why we started Micron Inventory Management and why we’re here today.

Our experience lies individually in supply chain management, and more latterly in consultancy, selecting and implementing MRP/ERP systems for client companies. We soon realised that these systems were not very good at fulfilling their promise relating to customer service and inventory reduction.

We specialised in these areas, using statistics to address the many weaknesses in MRP logic, but most notably in forecasting, demand profiling and establishing safety stock levels. We specified modifications to various ERP systems and have saved £millions for our clients over the years. The only downside has been in the resulting bespoke modifications and the need to reapply them to ERP upgrades as they have occurred.

This problem has been resolved after our introduction to a Dutch owned software company that had developed similar, but stand alone, software to link in and support ERP systems. With in excess of 300 installations in mainland Europe we have partnered with them to extend the same level of success to the UK, where we now have around 10 sites.

The proposition we can now give to any company holding stock is that we can reduce its inventory holding by at least 25% without detriment to its customer service levels. In fact, unless it is currently achieving 99.99% service levels, we will improve that at the same time.