Addis Ababa University

Submitted to: Mrs Axumawit T.

Group Members:
● Abel Tesfaye - NSR/4186/10
● Ameen Zuber - NSR/2467/10
● Dagmawi Getachew - NSR/7221/10
● Amanuel G/Hiwot - NSR/7850/10

Inventory Management
System (For Beverage
Wholesaler)
19th November 2019
Table of Contents

1. Introduction 2
Overview 2

1.1. Background 2

1.2. Description of the Existing System 3

2. Statement of the Problem 4

3. Objectives of the project 4

3.1. General objective 4

3.2. Specific objective 4

5. Methodology and Tools 6

6. Cost of the project 6

7. Schedule of the project 7

References 7

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1. Introduction

Overview
An inventory management system is a software that oversees the monitoring and maintenance of
stocked products, whether those products are company assets, raw materials and supplies, or
finished products ready to be sent to vendors or end consumers. The system provides
information to efficiently manage the flow of materials, effectively utilize people and equipment,
coordinate internal activities and communicate with customers. The warehouse inventory
management system allows a user to manage all on-hand inventory and incoming or outgoing
orders[1].

In other definition an inventory management system is a system which supervises the

flow of goods from manufacturer to warehouses and from these facilities to a specific point of
sale.

1.1. Background
The business we are making this software is for a beverage wholesaler located in Addis Ababa.
His business is buying a lot of beverages (Mirinda, Coca Cola, Sprite) from all over the country
and making it easy/convenient for store owners near Addis Ababa to buy them easily.

On some beverage types he is the exclusive distributor for the city, while on others he shares the
market with other similar distributors. He is responsible for organizing cargo transport when both
buying and selling the beverages. On top of that he has to continuously manage his inventory to
make sure he won't be out of stock.

1.2. Description of the Existing System

During our initial search of similar systems, we have encountered many systems in the
market which offer *almost* exactly the same functionality as our software. Perhaps the most
recognizable one is the one used inside FedEx.

The way their software works is[2]:

1. A customer walks in to their office seeking to ship an item to another location.

2. The FedEx officials wrap his/her item and generate a shipping order from their location to
the desired location.
3. During its different transit points the item is scanned by barcode and the current location
of the item is “broadcasted” to the sender and receiver.

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 4. When the item is received by a customer(confirmed by a FedEx official using the
customers signature), the item is considered delivered.

The FedEx system has more parts than described above. For example, if an item is lost during
shipping, they have procedures for handling this. They will for instance let both the receiver and
sender know what has happened and they will help them fill in an insurance complaint[3].

In addition, if the items need to be delivered urgently - customers could use FedEx Priority[4] to
get their items delivered overnight (with added fees). They even have services where a receiver
isn’t even required to come to their office. A FedEx official will deliver the item directly to where
the customer is.

The FedEx system becomes much more complicated when other sub-processes such as tax
processing[5] components are taken into account. In this process, FedEx officials are responsible
for ensuring tax is paid accordingly (for both the senders and receivers country).

But for our particular case how the beverage wholesaler works is much different than how the
FedEx system works. Most things are done manually:

1. The wholesaler directly orders beverages from different factories. Items (beverages) are
sent by truck to the wholesaler.
2. When the items arrive they are moved to the warehouse and their arrival date, quantity
and item name are written on a book.
3. Whenever people buy from the wholesaler, the items are fetched from the warehouse
and their current quantity and purchase is written in the book. The purchased items are
shipped to the customers using trucks contracted by the wholesaler.

2. Statement of the Problem

The primary problems we are trying to solve with this product are the hardships faced to
keep track of the inventory in the warehouse due to the fact that existing system involves
keeping track manually using paper. Secondly the existing manual system’s resource cost like
time, labor, paper and storage is high. And lastly lack of security because it's hard to back up the
data since it is manually written on paper which means if the data is lost they would have to count
everything from scratch.

The other less prominent problems we’ve observed are the lack of organization in the
manual systems is using paper for storage takes up physical space and where theres paper,
there's global warming. Transitioning to digital technology could help the environment a tiny bit
by not using paper.

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3. Objectives of the project

3.1. General objective

In general our main objective of this project is to develop an inventory management system that
can help the companies (in our case the beverage wholesaler) and the warehouse managers to
simplify their work by providing a way to easily keep track of the items in the inventory while also
allowing them to keep track of new incoming and outgoing inventory and also find the location of
any item quickly using our software.

3.2. Specific objective

Our specific objective are the following:

● Identifying functional and nonfunctional requirements.

● Identifying and defining of the problem that the existing system has.
● Design multiple components of the software:
○ Make optimal database design to reflect what sort of items will be included
○ Code different parts of the application
■ Warehouse Inventory overview screen
■ Item detail and history portions
■ Incoming and outgoing shipment details
● Implement and test the software.

4. Scope and Limitations of the project

Scope
Inventory Overview

The user will be able to see an overview table of all items currently on hand, their location and
current quantity.

● Each item will reside in its own row.

● Columns for each: inventory ID, item name, UPC, aisle,bay-shelf location, and quantity.
● The table will be sortable by column header in ascending or descending order.

Item Detail and History

The user will be able to view an item’s details, history, and adjust the items location.

● An item can be chosen from the overview table.

● An item’s detail area will show the following information: item ID, item name, UPC,
quantity on hand, and current location

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 ● The detail area will show the item’s history including incoming and outgoing shipments,
shipment date, quantity change, and associated vendor ID.
● An item’s location can be changed by adjusting the aisle, bay or shelf.

Incoming Shipment

The user will be able to add an incoming shipment, the items it contains, shipment date, order
number, truck number, and vendor ID.

● The incoming shipment area will contain inputs for the order number, truck number,
vendor ID, shipment date, and items within the shipment.
● An item not currently in the database may be added.
● The new item area will provide inputs for all categories of item details, matching those of
items already in the database.
● An item already in the database will have its quantity adjusted to include the incoming
quantity.

Outgoing Shipment

The user will be able to add an outgoing shipment, the items it contains, shipment date, order
number, truck number, and vendor ID.

● The outgoing shipment area will contain inputs for the order number, truck number,
vendor ID, shipment date, and items within the shipment.
● An item will have its quantity adjusted to remove the outgoing quantity

Limitations
Our software will not cover the following aspects:

● Facilitating payment methods or dealing with customers/factories directly. This should be

done externally.
● Unlike the above stated FedEx system we will not be responsible for handling tax
processing in either of sender/receiver countries.
● We don’t support ways to ship some items faster than other items (priority shipping)
● Our software will not handle insurance processing for items lost during shipping.
● Organizing trucks for shipping is not supported.

5. Methodology and Tools

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Considering our limited time, manpower and budget available for this project. We decided to use
the Waterfall process model. This process model may not be best prepared for unforeseen risk
also delivering the best customer satisfaction, but among others its the best fit for our case.

Our tools, here is a break down:

Graphical User Interface - Java

Using java will ensure our system works across many operating systems. Even though our main
focus is on Windows computers.

Database - Oracle

Since we are dealing with items. An object-oriented database would make development easier.

6. Cost of the project

Apart from time and minor expenses (for card and taxi), this project isn’t expected to cost us a lot
of money.

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7. Schedule of the project

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References
1. https://www.camcode.com/asset-tags/what-is-an-inventory-management-system/
2. https://www.quora.com/How-does-FedEx-tracking-work
3. https://www.shipware.com/fedex-shipping-insurance-a-comprehensive-guide
4. http://www.fedex.com/ms/services/intlpriority.html
5. https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/international/duties-and-taxes.html