-     Inventory Exceptions – PULSE shows you important exception conditions.

-     Inventory Aging – For the first time, you can see what inventory is not being used.

-     Stock Status Report – This shows dollars by location by inventory class.

-     Inventory Status – For the first time, you can browse your inventory looking for exception conditions. In addition to the browse screen, you can look at the status of any item. PULSE shows you key information on each item along with a month-by-month grid of activity and turns.

-     Reorder Advice Report

-     Physical Inventory – This sub-module will assist you with taking a more accurate cycle count or physical inventory. First, it displays items with the greatest variance over the past three inventories. For items being counted, it allows you to sort by quantity variance or dollar variance to pinpoint possible incorrect counts. No longer will you need to print the lengthy standard Macola variance reports.

PULSE tracks Inventory Turns

The purpose of increasing inventory turns is to reduce holding costs and overall inventory. Turns are an indication of the movement of your inventory. A item that turns over once a year will have higher holding costs versus turning more frequently. Turns are calculated by dividing usage over 3, 6, 9, or 12 months by the average on-hand inventory during the same time period. View turns for purchased items, manufactured items or both.

This screen allows you to track the performance of individual inventory items

PULSE Inventory Status profiles each item including a grid of monthly activity

Sort or filter on each column and re-arrange the columns as needed.

Drill-down from the above screen or manually key in the item number. You will see key data on each item, PLUS an easy-to-read grid showing the end-of month on-hand quantity, receipts, usage, transfers and inventory turns fo each of the past 12 months.  If needed, you can view detail transactions for a data range.

PULSE tracks Exception Conditions

Drill-down to view or print the details of important exception conditions.

PULSE tracks Inventory Aging as well as a Stock Status report by ABC class

Being able to track slow moving inventory is critical to successfully managing your inventory.  PULSE also gives you a recap of the status of your inventory by location.

PULSE assists you to take more accurate Cycle and Physical Inventories

-     Your ability to quickly count your inventory and reconcile those counts is critical to your operation.  PULSE assists in several ways:

-     Identify items that have caused the greatest quantity and dollar variances over the past few years. 

-     During your physical counting, it pinpoints items to possibly be recounted due to excessive quantity or dollar variances.  This eliminates printing the lengthy standard Macola variance reports.

-     What is the total dollar variance for each un-posted batch? – up to now, you had to run the standard Macola pre-post report to know what dollar variance will be posted.  Now, you can view it real-time as tags are keyed or scanned.

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CUSTOMER SERVICE / SHIPPING MODULE

The Customer Service / Shipping module offers:

-     On-time Shipping – A graph along with a detailed chart and drill-down

-     Items Causing Shortages – This revolutionary screen time-phases your customer orders versus pending replenish production or purchase orders.  It displays customer orders that cannot be shipped by the customer’s requested ship date.

-     Top Credit Memo Customers and Items – For the first time, you can now see the customers and inventory items that generate the most credit memos.

-     All of the screens and charts from the Executive module for tracking bookings, shipments and gross margin with comparisons to the prior year and budget.

PULSE measures On-time Shipping

All graphs and charts offer full drill-down for further analysis, printing, exporting to excel or e-mailing.

PULSE pinpoints Inventory Items Causing Shipping Shortages

This unique screen is an ‘MRP system’ just for customer orders that need to be shipped.  For example, you may want to review items scheduled to ship over the next 14 days for which you do not have sufficient on-hand quantitites nor a production order or purchase order that will replenish your inventory to meet the customer’s requested delivery date.

By drilling-down on an item, you will see a time-phased list of customer orders along with associated replenishment production orders or purchase orders.  The result is an effective way to manage customer order shortages.

PULSE tracks credit memos by customer and inventory item

Credit memos can indicate if your customer is ordering the wrong product, if you shipping them the wrong product, if the product is damaged in shipping, if your customer is damaging the product, etc.  You can drill-down to view or print the details.

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PURCHASING MODULE

The Purchasing module gives you information you have not seen before:

-       Vendor Performance – View late delivery and inspection statistics.

-       Reorder Advice Report – Customize you own reorder advice report.

-       Purchase Orders Scheduled to be Received – Conveniently view all items scheduled to be received.

-       Aging of Open Purchase Orders – P/O aging is part of your overall cash flow analysis.

-       Purchase Order Exceptions – PULSE shows you important exception conditions.

-       Items Received over the past X days – Conveniently view all items that have been received.

-       Top Vendors – View this year or last year payments by vendor.

PULSE measures Vendor Performance

View on-time delivery and inspection statistics by vendor and compare to all vendors.

PULSE offers a Purchasing Reorder Advice Report

PULSE allows you to customize your reorder advice report to meet your unique needs.  You can choose what columns of data to display as well as the selection criteria.  Sort or filter on each column and re-arrange the columns as needed.

PULSE Ages Your Open Purchase Orders and Displays Scheduled Receipts

The aging of open purchase orders greatly impacts your cash flow.  PULSE also gives you a convenient way to pinpoint past-due shipments as well as shipments scheduled to be received over the next X days.

PULSE gives you an up-to-date view of your top vendors

PULSE tracks exception conditions

PULSE gives you a snapshot of what has been received over the past X days

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ABC INVENTORY CLASS GENERATOR

This utility will allow you to very quickly and accurately set the proper ABC class for each of your purchased and/or manufactured items.  ABC classes are typically calculated separately for purchased items versus manufactured items.

How does this utility work?

-     The program relies on total dollar usage for the past twelve months for each item.  This information is stored in the PULSE Dashboard table called ‘Final Results’.  Usage is defined as being a customer sale or return, or a manufacturing order component issue (a backflushed item).

-     It reads each record in your item/location file, obtains the dollar usage from the Final Results table, computes the new class based on the calculation method chosen (see explanation of methods below), and displays the results.

-     There are separate columns to display the current ABC class and the suggested class.  Items that require a new class are bolded. 

-     If you do not agree with any of the suggested changes, you can change them.

-     When you have finished your review, you press the ‘update’ button to update the ABC codes in your item/location file.

Choose the method for calculating ABC class codes

-     By items within each location – Let’s say you have three warehouse locations and you want separate ABC classes for each location.  For example, based on dollar usage, item #123 may be an ‘A’ item in one location and a ‘B’ item in another location.

-     By item – This method gives each item the same class, regardless of its warehouse location.  The program adds  up the past 12 months of dollar usage for each item, regardless of its location. In this case, time #123 will be an ‘A’ class in all locations.

Running the PULSE Inventory ABC Class Generator

It is easy and fast:

-       Select either purchased or manufactured items.

-       In the upper left corner of the screen, click on the ‘Generate Data’ button.

The program reads all records in your Macola item/location file, calculates the recommended ABC class, and displays the results on the screen.  In the sample screen below, we have applied a filter to view only the ‘GER’ location.  Items that require a class change are bolded.  In the ‘New Class’ column, the program allows you to override the suggested class code.  The program also tells you the number of items that need changing. Note that the columns can be re-sequenced, sorted and filtered.  Additionally, the entire results can be printed or exported to Excel.

When finished, press the ‘Update Visible Items’ button.  ‘Visible’ indicates that it will only update the filtered items that are displayed on the screen.  For example, if you applied a filter to display only the ‘GER’ location, only those items will be updated.

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