If you run a phone refurbishment business, you know that inventory plays an important part in how you make money. Having even a single necessary phone part in stock when you need it most can save you from losing a client who wants to buy a big batch of refurbished smartphones.
If you buy phone parts in bulk, keeping them in order takes lots of time and, as a result, can cost you heaps of money. Which ways are there to make phone parts management a fast and simple thing to do? We have prepared the most efficient practices for cell phone refurbishers that will help you organize your stock the best way possible.
Sick and tired of looking for needles in a haystack? Check out our list!
Tip 1. Start using Bills of Materials
BOM (or Bill of Materials) is a comprehensive list of parts, materials, etc. that shows how much it costs a manufacturer to source components needed to create an end iOS or Android product. BOMs make ordering parts much easier. If you know which camera, LCD, battery you need to refurbish a certain device model, from which supplier to get them, and what is the quantity you currently need, your warehouse will work like clockwork, without shortages and, on the other hand, without unnecessary inventory holding costs.
Tip 2. Keep your BOMs updated
Having Bills of Materials is only half the battle. To add, change, and remove items from the BOMs to keep them up-to-date is another important thing. It takes time for sure but it’s essential for the success of your business. Thus, for example, you will avoid returns of spare parts ordered by mistake because of incorrect information in BOMs.
Tip 3. Locate smart
Locating mobile devices in a warehouse is quite simple. As for phone parts, it is better to make identifiers of the location of each SKU in the warehouse as detailed as possible: specify not only the shelf number, but also the number of the box/slot/cell, etc., since one shelf may contain many different items due to their small sizes.
Tip 4. Run trainings on inventory control for your employees
It’s unreasonable to expect perfect understanding of spare parts inventory control from your employees right from day one. Especially if you don’t pay much attention to training. Too much depends on how your employees interact with spare parts: your relationships with your suppliers and clients, your reputation, your income.
That’s why it’s important that you create a comprehensive onboarding system for new members of your staff at any level of business - from warehouse employees to managers.
Tip 5. Use a reliable WMS
Quality inventory control is impossible without proper WMS tools. Looking for a free solution to optimize their warehousing processes, many business owners start to search how to create a WMS in Google Sheets or Excel. You can try to find a Google Sheets inventory management template with necessary formulas on the Internet. Of course you should understand that these solutions are far from ready-to-use services: you will have to adapt the template to create the whole system from scratch according to your needs. It might even work for you if you have to manage the stock of only assembled devices that are fully ready for sale. But tracking spare parts using spreadsheets will undoubtedly lead to chaos in your inventory. Just imagine: checking in a list of parts after you disassembled a phone; checking out the parts after you used them for a repair… It even sounds painful, doesn’t it?
What other options do you have? You can use a warehouse management system tailored specially for your type of business. NSYS Inventory is one of such software solutions. It offers extensive capabilities that allow refurbishers to organize their spare parts inventory online efficiently:
- Create Bills of Materials for any device model that contain lists of spare parts that can be used to replace non-working components of a specific phone;
- Disassemble a device and get a list of corresponding parts created automatically;
- Use these parts to refurbish another phone in one click;
- Get understanding, when it is the best moment to reorder a new batch of spare parts;
- Use detailed reports to better understand your inventory flows, bottlenecks, and growth points:
Interested to learn how NSYS Group can optimize your phone refurbishment business? Send us your request to be one of the first to try the upcoming functionality of NSYS Inventory!
