Tracking item hire movements and shortages

Platform discussions
, ,
1

We need to manage the movements of a finite level of hire units across multiple offices and have monday help us display current qty in each location and flag any shortages or transfers required.
Eg. Site A needs x units on a certain date, site B also needs Y units, uot of a total of Z units. How do I use monday to help keep a running total of qty in each location, flag any shortaages and possibly create a dashboard of required transfers between locations?
Most info for inventory tracking in monday seems to be aimed at stock levels that can just be replenished, rather than tracking the same number of items around, removing stock from one location when adding to another etc.

2

Hi Jim,

This is a complex problem, which means you need to consider your requirements and your approach carefully.

The first point is that monday.com is not specialized software, however there are specialized software options to help manage exactly this scenario. There are certainly advantages to using monday.com (particularly if you can integrate this with other systems in your business).

While it would be an entire project to plan and build this architecture, as well as suitable dashboards and automations, here are some considerations you could make:

Boards
A board should define an entity/concept. Based on your description, I would start by drafting the system with the following boards:

  1. Offices – Each office should be an item, with relevant data such as name, location, capacity (or equivalent) etc.
  2. Units – It would make sense for me to have every hire unit as an item in this board. It may be that this board is not necessary. I don’t know exactly what “unit” refers to in your example. If you have something like 2-40 units at any one time, this board would probably be helpful. If you have more, something else might be preferable. The use of this board may also depend on the uniqueness of the units. Are they like for like or do different units have different specs/sources or other unique data.
  3. Deployments – This is a non-tangible entity that represents a unit (or possibly multiple) being deployed in a location. I would connect this board (two way) with the Units and Offices board. Form the connections relevant to each deployment. Add a Timeline column to represent the start and end dates of the deployment. Then add any other relevant data columns.

Structuring your solution in this way would allow you to make multiple useful dashboards.

  • You could use the Workload widget to check capacity (present and future) by Office and by Unit. It’s really easy to move timelines around with this widget in order to manage capacity. It’s good for spotting, at a glance, whether capacity is reached or not.
  • A Gantt or regular Timeline chart grouped by unit would make it easy to visually identify any duplicate deployments of a unit as well.

Additional considerations:

  • Does capacity/required units remain steady or would it vary over time? You may need to add additional architecture to model this. It could be tricky to do in monday.com and would require extra consideration beyond what I’ve provided here.
  • If the units specialized (as your post semi-implies), you’d need additional columns for tracking different types.
  • If the above complications are present, you may benefit from adding an additional layer to the architecture like “Unit Requirements” which defines the type and quantity of unit required at a given location for a specified period.
  • What sort of posthumous data and analytics would you require in the system?
  • What are your system outputs? How can you easily reorganize the units? This system will help you to vizualize and map the data, however a specialized system may automatically assign the units for you. That isn’t something you’re going to be able to do in monday.com natively, most likely. How can you Integrate with another system or engage an algorithm/AI to help you plan these “Deployments”?

There’s a lot that could go into this! However, there’s no need to fully automate and map everything. You might find that just managing a numbers column and exporting a board on a weekly basis gives you all the planning you need. monday.com is there to help you manage your data and deliver the profitable aspects of your business more effectively—it’s always worth remembering that as well.

Feel free to contact me (flyingravendesign@gmail.com) for a consultation or to collaborate on your solution. Likewise, monday.com have lots of partners who can help you.