Keeping the Books Straight when Receiving and Tracking Raw Materials Inventory

This white paper by Dr. Peter Green is one of a series about the conflicts between the needs of accounting and the needs of operations staff in industrial organizations. This white paper is about how to accurately track raw inventory and how to reconcile the different needs of accounting and operations in this important area.

At first this would appear to be a trivial topic but it turns out to have a number of surprising twists and turns. These can cause all sorts of issues and problems, especially when an inventory tracking system automatically exchanges data with an accounting system.

The author has sat through a number of meetings at which people have vehemently argued whether the accounting or operational view of inventory is the correct view. The answer is both and neither. An accounting system is a tool that enables the accounting staff to do their job while the barcode tracking system enables the operations management staff to do their job. But the two systems are very different.

In this white paper Dr. Peter Green examines the differences between the world-views of accounting and operations. He then describes how introducing a third system between the accounting and operations tracking systems can solve this problem by automatically translating data between these two differing world views. This enables both departments to do their jobs successfully without requiring duplicate data entry or manual translation of the data.

Please click here to download PDF version of this white paper and continue reading.