7 Ways to Streamline Material Management

Maintaining accurate inventory records can be challenging for any utility provider or public works operation but is essential for efficient material management. Manual processes for incoming stock are often labor-intensive and take your staff away from more productive tasks.

Meanwhile, expenses can creep over time due to over-purchasing and lost, undocumented, or expired stock. And when you’re managing storerooms across multiple locations, the problems are magnified.

Trimble Cityworks Storeroom is designed to track materials and transactions in a secure environment. Available for use with Trimble Cityworks AMS or as a standalone application, our warehouse management solution can help you reduce material costs, improve inventory levels, and better inform budgetary needs.

Here are a few ways you can leverage Storeroom to maximize the efficiency of your operations:

1. Scan Barcodes and QR Codes

Because the Storeroom application can be used on tablets and mobile devices, users can leverage device cameras for barcode and QR code scanning. Scanning allows users to quickly and accurately add, search, filter, and select materials.

2. Create Interactive Dashboards

A dashboard homepage displays search queries and data visualizations, putting the most important information at your fingertips. Domain administrators can create dashboards that are visible to all users, and individual users can also create custom dashboards for themselves. Dashboard widgets are interactive, allowing users to select materials for requisition, audit, and more.

3. Streamline Material Audits

Physical inventory audits often require warehouse operations to stop until the audit is complete. By configuring cycle counts in Storeroom, you can create scheduled reminders to audit materials incrementally throughout the year.

4. Create a Digital Paper Trail

Digital signatures and attachments can be added to important transactions, helping to track valuable data at various stages of the material life cycle. You can configure Storeroom to require a digital signature when a material is issued, received, transferred, or audited.

5. Track Serial Numbers

The latest version of Storeroom supports the serialization of materials, which in turn allows users to track warranty dates and convert materials into assets when they are installed—a water meter, for example. Current on-hand stock can be converted to serialized material, and new material can also be configured for serialization. You have three options for adding serial numbers: manually, with a barcode scanner, by uploading a CSV file.

6. Issue Material to Work Orders

Because Storeroom is part of the Trimble Cityworks platform, you can easily integrate your warehouse solution with the work management system used by the maintenance crews you support. Storeroom can issue material to existing work orders to help track and report on the materials used for any given task or project. The Work Order ID field in Storeroom validates your entries as you type in or search for existing work orders.

7. Deploy New Service Trucks

Storeroom includes functionality designed to simplify common tasks for software administrators. For example, the cloning feature allows you to easily configure and deploy new storerooms or service trucks quickly and efficiently.

By Brad Johnson, Trimble Cityworks Subject Matter Expert