Design and Implementation of Alarm Based Pharmacy Inventory Application
Chapter One
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The objective of this project work is to design and develop an Alarm Based Pharmacy Inventory Application, this alarm based inventory system to be developed will be able to provide a prompt when stock of a particular product is less and as such allow the manager the opportunity to reorder for the particular product before it finally runs out of the entire stock.
CHAPTER TWO
CONCEPT OF INVENTORY CONTROL SYSTEM
Inventory can be defined as a complete listing of merchandise or stock on hand, work in progress, raw materials, etc., made over a period of time by a business organization. Stock control, otherwise
known as inventory control,is used to show how muchstock you have at any onetime, and how you keep trackof it. Efficient stock control allows you tohave the right amount of stock in theright place at the right time. It ensuresthat capital is not tied up unnecessarily,
and protects production if problemsarise with the supply chain. An inventory control system may be used to automate a sales order fulfillment process. Such a system contains a list of order to be filled, and then prompts workers to pick the necessary items, and provides them with packaging and shipping information. Inventories also play an important role in national accounts and the analysis of the business cycle.
In any way stock control is a part of the accounting process. It enables you to keep a log of stock received and stock issued.
Before the age of computers stock control was done manually by keeping the stock book.
Real-time inventory control systems may use wireless, mobile terminals to record inventory transactions at the moment they occur. A wireless LAN transmits the transaction information to a central database.
Inventory Control is designed to support the requisition processing, inventory management, purchasing, and physical inventory reconciliation functions of inventory management through a set of highly interactive capabilities. The design of Inventory Control is based on the following key objectives:
- To provide information on the availability of stocked items and the status of stocked requisitions
- To facilitate timely requisition processing
- To automatically record and service backorders
- To help minimize inventory investments consistent with service objectives by basing purchasing decisions on usage history
- To provide automated tools to assist servicing, purchasing, and management of the inventory
- To improve financial control of the inventory by chargebacks to the user organizations
- To improve financial control of the inventory by periodic reconciliation of the inventory balances with the physical counts
Inventory management is primarily about specifying the shape and percentage of stocked goods. It is required at different locations within a facility or within many locations of a supply network to precede the regular and planned course of production and stock of materials.The scope of inventory management concerns the fine lines between replenishment lead time, carrying costs of inventory, asset management, inventory forecasting, inventory valuation, inventory visibility, future inventory price forecasting, physical inventory, available physical space for inventory, quality management, replenishment, returns and defective goods and demand forecasting. Balancing these competing requirements leads to optimal inventory levels, which is an on-going process as the business needs shift and react to the wider environment.
Inventory management involves a retailer seeking to acquire and maintain a proper merchandise assortment while ordering, shipping, handling, and related costs are kept in check. It also involves systems and processes that identify inventory requirements, set targets, provide replenishment techniques, report actual and projected inventory status and handles all functions related to the tracking and management of material. This would include the monitoring of material moved into and out of stockroom locations and the reconciling of the inventory balances. Also may include ABC analysis, lot tracking, cycle counting support etc. Management of the inventories, with the primary objective of determining/controlling stock levels within the physical distribution function to balance the need for product availability against the need for minimizing stock holding and handling costs.
APPLICATION OF INVENTORY SYSTEM
In today’s business environment, it is almost vital that businesses switch to an automated system for inventory management because manual inventory can lead to a number of errors, which will hurt the company in the future ( Rawlings 2009). At Southern Utah University in Cedar City, UT, the bookstore was looking for a way to get rid of their manual textbook inventory system because it was becoming very inefficient and time consuming (Kerner, 2010). At that time the bookstore did their inventory manually and used electronic cash registers. They had no type of computer system that would link their inventory to their product sales. The bookstore also operates a nearby convenience store that is open during the university’s annual summer Shakespeare festival.
To install the new system, they hired a company called BUDGETText. BUDGETText is a wholesale textbook distributor, but they also specialize in the design of software for textbook management (Kerner, 2010). The bookstore hired BUDGETText to install a computerized inventory system that linked directly to the book publishers. This allowed the university to instantly send orders out to their publishers when more textbooks were needed. The University received decoders, card readers, scanners, receipt printers and cash drawers to automate their inventory and sales processes (Kerner, 2010). Now, after the system implementation, each item has a detailed description at the point of sale rather than just the book category. This includes the book title, the author, and the sale price during the transaction, the total sale, the amount paid and how much change was given, if any. All of the bookstores items have barcodes and are now tracked at the point of sale and are instantly subtracted from the system. With the new system Southern Utah no longer has to worry about creating errors through their manual inventory (Kerner, 2010).
The new inventory system connects the inventory directly to their sales so everything is instantly updated, which saves the university time and money. Because the university no longer has the manual labor of checking inventory they have a more accurate account of what items are in stock. Their system is also directly connected to the Internet, which provides students with the opportunity to purchase their textbooks online.
CHAPTER THREE
SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
New System Design Consideration
Based on the extensive comparison of the previous systems, it has been concluded that a number of steps are required to design a useful and successful web-based alarm inventory management system in our choice organization. These steps are schematically shown as in
Requirements definition: In the first phase, the scope and needs of our inventory application are defined by investigating a relevant website posted by Fink (2006) in terms of what the application must do, its main features and the technical requirements. This stage consists of the following steps:
- Scope: In order to define the scope of the alarm based inventory web application, it is necessary to compile a detailed list with a clear description of the application features.
- Need: Needs analysis is a crucial part of developing process. In this step, one has to estimate the potential users, choose a server side
language (PHP), database (MySQL), and decide where to host it and how to make it live.
Design: After requirements phase, naturally comes the ‘design’ part of the application. In this phase, the following steps are identified:
- Application Map: An application map contains just meaningful and essential information about the structure of the application.
- Database: A simple way to do that is to use an entities-relationships (ER) model, which, in general, can follow in the following order:
first, define tables, and then attributes and relationships between tables.
- Page Structure: Next step is to design an approximate structure of the page, identifying all main sections using a name (for example, #header, #navbar, #mainContent, #sidebar).
- Server-side Language: Bearing in mind for taking an object-oriented approach in developing the application, various classes, functions and all server-side features need to be defined. It would act as a ‘guide’ for the purpose of implementation in the next phase.
CHAPTER FOUR
PROPOSED WEB-BASED SYSTEM
The inventory system is designed with the hands-onapproach. Prior to the actual survey, initial visitsto the selected pharmacy were made and meetings with the stock keeper were conducted. Data regarding stock ordering, sales, and customers want were collected from the pharmacy’s manual inventory record. The data then wereanalyzed and extrapolated to determine someimportant aspects of the research, including the classification of commodities, forecast of number of customers expected to request a particular commodity, and the bench mark for triggering the alarm system of our application. A userrequirement study was carried out, and the resultswere used to develop the engine of the system. Sincemost of the functionality requires flexibility, it wasneeded to develop the system from the scratch,consequently a top-down system approach has beenimplemented. The practice of stocking is necessary inthe pharmacy since some drugs require a flexiblelead time. It is advisable that at the end of each business day, the stock keeper will sum up the stock, andprepare a proper documentation before it is enteredinto the system. As a starter, a hardcopy of theavailable item would be printed and compared to theavailable stock. Any unusual event will be recordedand necessary action could be taken.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
This alarm web-based inventory management system is innovative in providing a communication link between pharmacies as well as recording local stock levels. This has allowed the stock keeper to manage the stocks of more than 200 sample drugs within the business framework. It has also crucially allowed tracking of stock flow and some tracing capabilities.
In addition, it will help to reduce the inconveniences, undue cost and public dismay faced when drugs are found to be out of stock without prior knowledge.
RECOMMENDATION
Data management in all aspect of life has tremendously been influenced by the advent of computer. Computer programs are man made and as such are prone to malfunctioning. It is recommended that regular maintenance be carried out on the system. This will help reduce to the risk of pilling up redundant bugs that may eventually lead to a crash of the entire system.
Also, this system is database driven and as with any database system regular backup is required to prevent any loss of data.
REFERENCES
- George, D. (2005); “Zen and the Art of Information”, Oracle magazine, March/April 2005, Oracle Inc.
- Gilmore, K (2008): “ Making inventory control more efficient”
- Nnebe, S.E. (2002); “A website Design of a Hospital Management System: A case study of Unizik Medical Centre, M.Sc Thesis, Department of Computer Science, School of Postgraduate Studies NnamdiAzikiwe University.
- Ogwunbayo, S.T. (2005); “Information Processing”, Centre for Language Studies, Ibadan.
