Our scanner solution versus “pen & paper“: Inventory

How fast does a warehouse team work with and without autoscan? Let’s do inventory and find out!

You surely have one goal when introducing a scanner solution like autoscan in your warehouse: to work more efficiently and save time in the process. So the question is: How much time do you actually save using autoscan?

The answer can be found in our series of articles. The first article took a closer look at incoming goods – now it‘s time to do inventory!

The comparison

Our example looks at a warehouse with 2.000 shelves holding about 5.000 items needing to be counted during the yearly inventory.

  • Without autoscan
  • 50 inventory count lists are being printed and handed out to warehouse staff.

    8 minutes
  • The staff works in teams of two: Each team gets one count list, with one person counting and the other person ticking off items. Five. Thousand. Times

    47 hours
  • Probably the most popular job: All numbers recorded on the inventory count lists are being manually entered into the system.

    1 hour
  • Total time needed:
    48 hours, 8 minutes
  • With autoscan
  • QR codes of all 50 inventory count lists are printed on a couple of pages. To open the inventory count list on the scanner, staff only has to scan the code.

    2 minutes
  • Only one person with a scanner is needed per list: They scan the shelf number, followed by the items – and off we are to the next shelf!

    16 hours
  • Immediately after scanning, autoscan automatically transfers the data to the ERP system – done!

    0 minutes
  • Total time needed:
    16 hours, 2 minutes

The time savings in our fictitious example is impressive: About 30 working hours are saved – that’s 70 percent of overall time!

Doing inventory faster thanks to the integration and usability of our scanner solution

On the one hand, autoscan achieves these time savings by integrating with your ERP system so that data is retrieved and directly sent back. (Fun fact: if your WIFI reception is bad, autoscan saves the data and sends it as soon as the connection is re-established.)

On the other hand, working with autoscan is much easier because we made it fun to use. Doing inventory with autoscan is much less demanding and exhausting for your staff than using pen and paper.

Proven in the real world

Of course the above example is theoretical, but you don’t just have to take our word for it. autoscan is being used in quite a few warehouses by now and our customer feedback proves us right:

“Let me start by saying that the new scanner solution pays off and makes sense. We finished the whole inventory with 4 people within 2 days – before that, we needed 4 days with 6 to 8 people.

At the beginning, our team was not thrilled. We did not have an adequate assignment of storage locations and it took some time to switch to barcodes. However, enthusiasm grew during the inventory and now, after three weeks of using autoscan, it has become popular throughout the spare parts warehouse.“

Franz Lingl (Owner of car dealership Lingl)

Want more time?

Contact us if you want to know more about our scanner solution autoscan and how it can make your warehouse more efficient!