Computer Software for Steel Professionals

Structural Material Manager Inventory Tie-In

The Length-Nesting Module is able to access your in-house inventory, as well as your supplier's stock list, as a source of stock lengths. Please note that this feature applies only to lineal items, as the Plate-Nesting Module always accesses supplier stock rather than in-house inventory.

In order to give maximum flexibility based on your specific inventory needs, the Length-Nesting Module can perform the following five different types of nests:

1) Nest material using up to nine different standard stock lengths, assuming unlimited quantities of each length are available. A different set of stock lengths can be specified for each material type, so you can instruct the system that 16'-0 and 21'-0 stocks are available for Pipes while 20'-0, 40'-0, 55'-0 and 60'-0 sections (all hypothetical, of course) are available for the W.T. sections. Mode #1 of nesting is ideal for the fabricator that does not wish to nest into any in-house inventory and does not know (or care) what specific stock the supplier has.

2) Nest into your in-house inventory only. This mode is generally used by steel warehouses; it accounts for the exact lengths and quantities you have in stock for each material type and description and considers that stock to be the only available source for stock lengths. Fabricators wishing to nest only into in-house inventory will also find this mode of nesting useful.

3) Use only your supplier's stock. This type of nest is intended for the fabricator that knows what quantities and lengths the supplier has in stock, but does not want to use any in-house stock.

4) Utilize your in-house inventory as best as possible, then resort to using your supplier's stock. This mode is ideal for the fabricator who has some sort of in-house inventory, whether it is a large stock or just a few remnants, and wants to use that stock before nesting into the supplier's specific stock. This mode can be thought of as a mix of mode #2 and mode #3.

5) Nest into in-house inventory until no further in-house stocks can be used, then nest the remaining list items into unlimited quantities of standard stock lengths. This mode is basically mode #4 with the exception that the supplier's exact stock is unknown; it can also be considered a combination of mode #1 and mode #2.

When nesting into any in-house inventory (modes #2, #4 and #5 above), the system can automatically remove from inventory any stocks that were utilized and add back "drops" (the remnants) that exceed a certain length that you specify. This allows it to maintain a "perpetual" inventory file without need for manually deleting utilized stocks and entering resulting remnants.

One important time-saving aspect of having the in-house inventory stored in Structural Material Manager is that total dollar value figures can be quickly generated whenever they are needed for accounting purposes. Most companies need such inventory tallies yearly, quarterly or even monthly. These totals can now be generated in minutes rather than the hours that manual methods sometimes require.