“Annual Physical Inventory Audit reduced from days to hours.  We were able to extract all parts by location to a document and easily run down the list to verify and count.”
- Amos Mui - Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain, Virtual Instruments

Company Overview

Company Overview

Founded in 2008, Virtual Instruments embarks on the road to become the world innovative technology leader by solving the most critical IT performance and availability issues in the Data Centers. In 2016, Virtual Instruments merged with Load DynamiX and Xangati.

Load DynamiX is the leading workload performance analytics company, with the focus on providing cohesiveness on validating and stressing workload simulation prior to deployment in the most complex and hybrid infrastructure. On the other hand, Xangati is a leader in virtual and cloud infrastructure performance monitoring, added to an already intelligent solution.  

With all three companies combined together, Virtual Instruments offers a solution, called App-Centric Infrastructure Performance Management, to provide accurate real-time end-to-end insight into the company's IT infrastructure.

The Challenge - A Better Tracking Inventory System

The Challenge - A Better Tracking Inventory System

As Virtual Instruments began to expand its business in 2013, it needed a better way to track inventory in and out of the facility than using QuickBooks. The existing process at the time was time-consuming and lacking accuracy. "At an early stage within our company we were managing inventory in and out of our corporate office with a limited view of what is shipping to customers or delivering from suppliers" - Amos Mui points out. This leads to high inventory costs, low productivity and dissatisfied customers, so Virtual Instruments knew it needed to change.

However, given the budget constraint, Virtual Instruments needed to find a cloud-based solution that can improve its inventory management efficiency at a reasonable price.

In addition, regulatory compliance and auditing are also challenges that Virtual Instruments needed to address given its business with many partners and customers who have their own set of rules and requirements. Thus, the company wanted a streamlined solution that simplifies the reporting process, improves data entry accuracy, and guarantees compliance.

Overall, Virtual Instruments was looking for a warehouse management solution that offers:

• An automated real-time tracking system that provided inventory visibility and accurate data information
• Reliable features, yet customizable inventory system
• Reasonable price
• Regulatory compliance and auditing
• Integration ready
• User-friendly

Finding a Solution With SmartTurn

Finding a Solution With SmartTurn

Amos Mui, Director of Manufacturing and Supply Chain of Virtual Instruments, stated that "after careful research and consideration, Smartturn DiCentral is exactly what we needed, providing flexibility and powerful solution for inventory tracking".

SmartTurn's easy-to-use, web-based warehouse management system (WMS) breaks the traditional enterprise WMS software mold of expensive upfront license and consulting fees, lengthy deployment times, and ongoing maintenance costs.

Smartturn helped Virtual Instruments manage the entire inventory from multiple warehouse locations by an online inventory control software with detailed reports. It provides simplistic but clear visibility with real-time information and the ability to track a history of every transaction and inventory item. This allows Virtual Instruments to perform physical inventory auditing with ease. "Annual physical inventory audit reduced from days to hours" - Amos Mui stated - "We were able to extract all parts by location to a document and easily run down the list to verify and count."

For better inventory control, Smartturn automatically tracks inventory receipts from suppliers and shipment notices to customers. With the ability to create custom fields and custom pages, SmartTurn allows users to customize the system according to specific business requirements. Virtual Instruments used this flexible feature to do custom tracking by serial number, unique identifier and versions of the product.

"Smartturn helps us to gain better oversight of our warehouse operation and inventory level" - Amos Mui added.

The Results - 99+% Inventory Accuracy and 100% success rate for auditing

The Results - 99+% Inventory Accuracy and 100% success rate for auditing

In a nutshell, Virtual Instruments has improved its inventory control and tracking system tremendously with Smartturn. Here are some highlighted results:

• Back end APIs that allowed Virtual Instruments to integrate to their ERP system seamlessly - Microsoft Dynamics AX
• Annual inventory audits reduced from days to hours with 100% success in auditing
• Inventory accuracy improved to 99.9%
• Recreating the shipping and packing list for specific customers is a simple click of a button

“It has never been easier to keep track of the entire inventory and monitor their flow in real-time throughout the whole process” -  Amos Mui is impressed by the smooth transition to a new inventory management system and SmartTurn’s capabilities.

To find out more about Virtual Instruments, visit its website: https://www.virtualinstruments.com.