Challenges in End-of-Life Product Management

In retail supply chain management, receiving new inventory and retiring expired inventory is known as End-of-Life cycling of inventory (EOL). Handling EOL is especially important when dealing with all types of inventory, especially self-life, expiration dates, planned obsolescence of tech products, as well as food and retail products with expiration dates. When handling this on a large scale identifying the location and status of products can be a serious challenge.

When inventory can’t be located in an efficient manner, time, storage space, and items can go to waste. To minimize or completely prevent losses like this, companies sometimes implement solutions like:

• Scheduling manual monthly reviews and inventory counts to manage expiration dates and shelf life
• Barcoding inventory and manually cycle count processes

The Apptricity Solution

With Apptricity’s Enterprise Inventory Management solution, companies can attach active beacon technology to each item, box, pallet, or other inventory unit desired. These tags provide information regarding the location of the inventory, expiration dates, and shelf life of the inventory item(s).

Warehouse personnel can then use mobile tablets to view the inventory and pinpoint the exact location and remaining shelf life as part of an automated FIFO process.

Apptricity Solution Features

• Expiration Date Management – When an expiration date is approaching, an alert is generated.
• Automated Cycle Counting – Cycle counts can be done without sending in personnel to record inventory in person.
• Automatic Reporting – Proactively managing inventory levels is so much easier with out-of-the-box reports.
• Detailed Inventory Locations – Seeing exactly where on the warehouse floor every piece of inventory is in real time means that soon-to-be-obsolete/expired items can be easily accessed, sold, and shipped as soon as possible.
• Item Master Catalog – Having a central system allows you to access the quantity and expiration date of each piece of inventory.
• Automated Reorder Points – Purchase orders can be auto-generated when inventory quantities fall below a user-defined threshold.

End-of-Life product becomes much more manageable when your supply chain is completely visible in real-time.

So what are you waiting for? Set up a demo and see how we can automate your supply chain with Apptricity’s Enterprise Inventory Management solution with the latest state-of-the-art Internet of Things tracking technology to make sure inventory is handled in the best way possible. Minimize the inventory loss and labor hours spent pulling inventory associated with expiration dates with Apptricity Corporation.