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Example site for an entirely fictional business — not a real company.

Stock ControlRidgeline Laboratory Supplies

Sample data

Warehouse overview

What is arriving today, what is running short and what is sitting on quarantine hold.

18

Items below their safety stock

6

Items out of stock

4

Deliveries booked in for today

3

Batches on quarantine hold

inspection outstanding

11

Stocktake discrepancies still unexplained

In goods receipt today

Deliveries accepted on business days from 7:00 AM to 3:00 PM at gate 2.

  • Northgate Chemicals, St. Louis

    LS-88417 · order B-24118 · 7 lines · arrived 8:05 AM

    Buffer solutions and ethanol. Line 3 is short-delivered and the batch numbers have not been recorded yet.

    Being checked

  • Westbrook Laboratory Trading, Louisville

    LS-88412 · order B-24102 · 12 lines · arrived 9:30 AM

    Two lines were never ordered and appear on the note without a reference. Purchasing is chasing it.

    Discrepancy

  • Thorncroft Glassware, Akron

    LS-88398 · order B-24071 · 3 lines · arrived yesterday

    One carton broken in transit. The whole line went onto quarantine hold, photo filed with the delivery note.

    Quarantine

  • Redstone Plastics Engineering, Evansville

    LS-88409 · order B-24095 · 4 lines · arrived yesterday

    Checked and complete. Putaway to bins B-01-06 to B-01-09 is still outstanding.

    Putaway open

  • Transfer from the Memphis central store

    booked in for 3:00 PM · 2 pallets · announced without a note

    An internal transfer rather than a purchase. The delivery note is printed while unloading.

    Booked in

Items below safety stock by product group

Counts stocked items whose quantity is below the recorded safety stock, as of 7:00 AM today.

Chemicals
5
Plastic consumables
4
Glassware
3
Protective equipment
3
Instruments and spares
2
Refrigerated items
1
The project frame

How Awelior would approach this project

Ridgeline Laboratory Supplies is invented — the way it is built is not. None of this is work delivered for a client. It is the shape we would give such a project — with the same depth, but without a client who would have to answer for it.

Where it starts

Cavendish Laboratory Supplies carries items that expire and belong to batches. The stock list is a spreadsheet, delivery notes sit in a binder, and at stocktake people walk the warehouse with clipboards. As long as nothing gets recalled that works; one batch recall reveals that nobody can say where the goods went.

Decisions

  • Batch and expiry are mandatory fields, not remarks

    Both are captured at goods receipt and travel with the line. In the old spreadsheet they were free-text columns — and a free-text field three people fill in three ways is worthless in a recall.

  • Purchase suggestions from consumption, not from a reorder point alone

    A fixed reorder point over-orders in summer and under-orders in autumn. The suggestion factors in actual consumption — and it stays a suggestion; a person places the order.

  • An item record with history

    Every item has a view of its own with movements. That is the screen that answers “where did this go” — and the one a spreadsheet cannot structurally have.

Deliberately left outNo bin location management and no handheld picking. Both only pay off above a warehouse size this business does not have — and building them because they impress is exactly the kind of effort nobody uses later.

What is in it

Screens
5
Content blocks
17
Languages
4

Five screens, in all four languages, with sidebar, header and stated role. Navigation works; tables, filters, calendar, history, board and forms are rendered and inert. Item numbers, batches and stock figures are invented.

How it would go on

  • Goods receipt with a scanner

    Reading a delivery note instead of typing it — that is where a stock system really saves time, and it depends on hardware.

  • Suppliers and pricing

    Purchase suggestions need supplier terms, minimum order quantities and lead times, or they propose quantities nobody would actually order.

  • Stocktake

    Count sheets, discrepancies, valuation and the handover to accounts — once a year, but under time pressure when it comes.

Talk through your project

Sample data

An application like this for your business?

Stock Control is invented — the way it is cut is not. Applications like this come out of the processes a business already runs.

Sample application by Awelior. Invented business, invented data, nothing stored.