When this author first got started in Inventory software back in 1995, I was handed a much older Inventory system and asked to convert it to something more usable. The spreadsheet that was being used as an Inventory system for a test equipment storage room contained all the test equipment, over 800 pieces, in a few columns, including the manufacturer, the model number, and a barcode number. Test personnel each had a barcode number on their ID card. The employee would scan their own barcode, the barcode for the equipment, then a barcode for CheckIn or CheckOut. Unfortunately, the spreadsheet wasn't working and the person who'd built it had no clue as to why.

My own first iteration of a replacement was written in Access 2.0. This replacement was alright, but Access 97 loomed large and the first database was rewritten for Access 97 within a matter of months. This soon became unwieldy, and as testing was expanded, the database grew too large for its own code. The decision was made to split the database, i.e., the database would only hold the data while the code would be written in Visual Basic 4. And so, it was … but unfortunately, Visual Basic 4 was too "old school". It still contained remnants of the much-older Windows 3.11 and the resulting programs even looked and acted that way. Since Visual Basic 5 was almost a full rewrite of the programming language, the front end of the Inventory database was once again rewritten to accommodate these changes.

Was that the end? Not really. This same database, at the time being used in four test facilities across the U.S., was once again rewritten, as a case study for a book on creating programs with Visual Basic 6. This was the database's sixth iteration in an ever-so-slightly different language. It's possible it's gone on further with another technician in those older facilities, but I don't really know how that turned out.

One feature of this Inventory software to realize is this: Once the data structure was redeveloped for Access 97, this structure never changed again. The program itself did, many times over. But the data was the data was the data. That data was rather stable, and still is today.

The best Inventory software is the kind which doesn't require constant updating. Some Inventory software is now built in such a way that it will run in virtually any web browser, served from a server containing custom-tailored and fully configurable ASP and ASP.NET pages to generate the web pages the user sees. Any changes to the software means copying new pages onto that server, making the updates largely transparent to the user. I wish I'd known of and had access to this technology way back when. It would have saved me a lot of trouble, time and aggravation.

Check and see if the vendor offers the vendor chosen offers the choice to train IT personnel on modifications to the system, completed internally instead of paying the software vendor to do so. For more information on this option of learning the source code, take a look at this very informative article.

Cambridge Manufacturing Journals


Manufacturing.gov