WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY FOR EFFICIENT
STOCK TAKING AND INVENTORY
Prepared by:
Riad A. S. Abeid; IT Manager
Blue Salon Group
Doha-Qatar
Agenda
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Introduction
Current infrastructure
The problem
The wireless solution
Compression
Benefits
Conclusion
Executive Summary
• The IT department aligned its strategy with the
business strategy, through the implementation of
IT to drive the overall strategy.
• Information Technology is an enabling tool for our
business to grow, its not our business
• IT contributes positively to the bottom line
• IT made business easier
• IT increased human resources capabilities
The Blue Salon Group
Blue Salon started its operations in Qatar in 1981 as a retail department
store and a distribution agency for several prestigious consumer
products.
Blue Salon now is a group, consisting of more than ten companies with
different activities including distribution and retail, All these ten companies
together have more than 38 outlets in Qatar excluding the main
showroom which is about 5000 square meters, the biggest department
store in Qatar employing more than 800 people and with a turnover of
about US $70,000,000.00
Blue Salon WAN Infrastructure
With over 38 remote locations and the main office, Blue Salon flaunts to be one
of the biggest retailers and online inventory leaders in Qatar
IT @Blue Salon plays a vital role in the support of the overall business of Retail
and wholesale.
The IT department has a strong software and Hardware & Networking divisions.
Blue Salon has the following assets to its credit
•Domain Controllers
•Backup domain controllers
•Exchange Server
•ISA server
•Oracle (AIX) Database server
•Terminal Service enabled servers
•File/Print Server
•Fax server
•Antivirus Server
Blue Salon connects to the remote location
by two methods: (method 1)
1- Locations with less than or up to 5 users connect
through the Bundled Analog lines provided by the local
Telecom and Internet Service provider Q-Tel.
This connection is done using a router (Cisco 3700
series) at the main office which is a 40 channel BRI ISDN
connection.
The remote locations are connected through a Cisco
1700 series router with the Bundled Analog WIC2AM
which connects two normal analog lines of 56kbps each,
hence gaining a total bandwidth of approx 100kbps
application usage, equivalent to the ISDN speed.
Blue Salon connects to the remote location
by two methods: (method 2)
2- Locations with more than 6 users, usually in big malls with more than
6 or 7 outlets containing more 12 users connect through the MPLS (Multi
Protocol Layered Switching), which is an IP/VPN connection managed
and provided by Q-Tel.
The MPLS structure is a bottle neck connection with detailed drawing
given below
The main connection is a 1Mbps line sharing its usage to the other 3 lines
having a speed of 256kbps each
Q-Tel
Hyatt Plaza
IP/MPLS Network
256kbps
1Mbps
The Mall
Royal Plaza
Blue Salon
IP VPN
256kbps
256kbps
City Centre
The Problem
•Blue Salon with more than 38 retail outlets and around five of them being
department stores have nearly 400,000 different items
•Manual stock taking for Blue Salon or any of the outlets took more than
three months to complete. This period included the physical stock taking,
data entry and data processing to get to the final variance result
•Since Blue Salon strictly follows the policy of non-stop daily operations at
any cost, physical stock was taken after normal working hours, with about 40
teams of two Persons each in cases of the big stores
•For the smaller outlets, it used to take us more than 10 hours per store just
for the physical counting
•This cost us our time, money and human resources
•There was a solution for this with the handheld barcode scanners. But this
solution needed data uploading and downloading each and every time we
needed to take stock and then generate the stock variance report
The Final Wireless solution
•Since we had computers as the point of sales machines in every outlet,
i.e. from single counters to multiple counters in the department stores and
the warehouses, we decided to utilize these for the stock taking purposes,
whether it be the yearly or the perpetual stock taking
We developed a program for taking stocks, as a part of our ERP that was
able to read the item barcodes using wireless scanners (Bluetooth or RF
technologies) connected to the PCs in each outlet
These scanners could read and access each and every item barcode on the
display shelves, and move it online to the ERP system directly at the same
time.
The results were very clear. We had saved on time, money and
human resources
Comparison between the Manual & Wireless
Technology Stock taking.
Manual
ST
Wireless
COST
Money
US $
in
4000
1200
Time
640
192 working hours
Human
40
Teams
12
10
days
On the spot
working hours
Teams
Resources
Result time
Benefits of Wireless solution
Another big advantage we had with the wireless
stock taking was during the perpetual stock taking
time.
The stock controller could get the final variance
report in the same store as soon as the physical
count was over, rather than to take the counts
back to the back office for data upload, processing
and result generation.
Conclusion
From our experience using this method
for inventory control made the stock
controller’s and outlives easier and
saved a lot of:
TIME
Lowered COST
& Increased ACCURACY.
Provided better support for the
business