Stock, from the shelf to the truck

Why one tab per technician rather than a single inventory?

Because the expensive problem is not running out, it is having the product in the wrong place. Three drums on the shelf are worth nothing when the technician is across town with none.

A single inventory answers « do we have any? ». The trade's question is « who has it? ». So the screen opens on the shelf, then gives one tab per technician, and each is computed by exactly the same code. There is no real stock on one side and an estimate on the other.

Moving a product is never typed twice. Handing a drum to Freddy writes two movements of opposite signs whose total stays nil: the product changes hands without the company gaining or losing any. That is what prevents the classic gap between the shelf total and the sum of the trucks.

How does the number stay right without recounting everything?

Because the quantity is never stored. Every intake, issue or correction is a dated movement, and today's quantity is only their sum.

A stored stock figure decays at the first oversight, and nobody knows when it started lying. A computed one does not: a wrong figure is fixed by one more movement, and you always know where it came from, when, and why. Nothing is overwritten, everything is added.

An intake

What arrives from the supplier, with its lot number and expiry date.

An issue

What leaves, handed to a technician or used in the field.

An adjustment

The owned-up correction, when the real count does not match. It stays visible in the register; it does not rewrite history.

What does a technician actually have to do?

Answer one question per product, how much is left, by picking from a list. They type no number and count nothing.

Others have tried making a technician count tubes while standing in a hallway. They type a number at random, or they type nothing. But the office already knows what it handed over: three tubes make a list of four answers, three, two, one, none. Picking from that list costs no effort, and the office learns a number instead of a vague word.

The state is not chosen either, it is derived from the number, with the same rule on both sides of the line. The phone colours the card the instant the choice is made, without waiting for the network, and the server writes the same state to the database. Two copies of that rule would drift apart, and the technician would see green where the office reads red.

The screen is drawn to be used outdoors, standing, one hand busy, often with work gloves on. The choice row is 56 pixels tall across the full width, well past the 44 below which a thumb misses, in flat solid colour so it reads at arm's length in full sun.

What about products nearing their date?

Lots carry their expiry date and rise to the top of the screen as it approaches, wherever the product sits, including inside a truck.

An expired lot in a truck is the most expensive of all, because nobody looks at it. So the shelf opens on the day's only two decisions, what to reorder and what is about to expire, and the rest of the list waits quietly below.

The same lot often sits in two places, part on the shelf and part in a truck. It is counted once, and the alert says where it is, rather than repeating the same product name twice.

What happens on the day of an inspection?

The register filters by intake, by issue and by holder, and exports to a spreadsheet file carrying the date, the product, its registration number, the quantity, the lot and the expiry.

The federal registration number follows the product from its record all the way to the register line. Without it the line is worth nothing to an inspector, and adding it by hand six months later is not realistic.

The export is a CSV that Word and Excel open without complaining about accents. Atlas does not produce your province's or your country's official document: it provides the lines, dated and complete, from which that document is filled in.

Do I have to enter every product by hand?

No. A shared catalogue is provided, and you only add your own house products by hand.

The catalogue is shared by every company and searched by name. What is specific to you stays yours: your reorder threshold product by product, and your house products, which appear only in your account.

A product can also be bought in one unit and applied in another. A 500 millilitre drum is one purchase unit and five hundred usage units: both are known, so that « two drums left » and « one litre left » never contradict each other.

Frequently asked questions

Read next