Inventory Management for Manufacturers

What manufacturers need to track

Raw materials (bar stock, sheet, plate) with quantities and lot numbers. Purchased components (hardware, fasteners, tooling). Finished goods waiting to ship. And critically: what's already committed to open jobs vs what's available.

The last point is where spreadsheet-based inventory falls apart. A spreadsheet might say you have 200 lbs of 6061, but if 150 lbs is committed to jobs that haven't started yet, you only have 50 lbs available. Without a system that links inventory to jobs, you'll double-commit material and discover the problem at the worst possible time.

Receiving and traceability

When material arrives, logging the receipt with lot number, material cert, and quantity creates the foundation for traceability. In regulated industries (aerospace, medical), you need to trace any finished part back to its raw material lot, material cert, and vendor. This is only possible if you capture the data at receiving.

Most small shops skip this step because it feels like overhead. But when a customer calls about a quality issue on parts shipped 6 months ago, lot traceability lets you identify exactly which material was used and whether other customers received parts from the same lot.