Mobile Inventory

The project was created for stock counting of goods at warehouses that are situated at a distance from each other. The system consists of a mobile application (designed for PocketPC devices with compact framework 1.1 installed) and a web application. Mobile devices get equipped with barcode scanners. An employee scans all goods in the warehouse. A mobile device stores information in its repository and then sends it to the server. It can also work in offline mode, allowing you to see whether a specified kind of goods is available and where it is stored. All goods are divided into categories. In online mode you can check if these goods are available at other warehouses and in what quantities.

Solution

The application has a main data warehouse that stores all information about goods categorized into the following groups: warehous, category, quantity. Mobile Inventory has a web-application that allows creating and managing users, reading selling reports, viewing/changing goods information. Every user performs a specific role:

Clerk. Clerks are only able to:
- Perform Item Inquiry.
- View reports. (Website)
Salesman. Salesmen are able to:
- Perform Item Inquiry.
- Perform Stock Counting. (offline mode)
- View reports. (Website)
Sales Manager. Sales Managers are able to:
- Perform Item Inquiry (online mode and Website).
- Perform Stock Counting. (offline mode)
- Add, edit, and delete items and their quantity. (Website)
- Add, edit, and delete categories of items. (Website)
- View reports. (Website)
Super Administrator. Super Administrator is able to:
- Perform Item Inquiry. (MI online mode and Website)
- Perform Stock Counting. (MI offline mode)
- Add, edit, and delete items and their quantity. (Website)
- Add, edit, and delete categories of items. (Website)
- Add, edit, and delete other users. (Website)
- Add, edit, and delete user roles. (Website)
- Add, edit, and delete Store locations. (Website)
- View reports. (Website)

The mobile application has its own database for working in offline mode. Mobile Inventory synchronizes with the main database through specially designed web-service.

Architecture

Database is used to store all information, generate centralized statistics, maintain data integrity and business logic.
Front end is responsible for displaying application web pages written in ASP.NET. It is separated from business logic in order to provide flexible and easy way to improve application appearance without addressing application logic. For interaction with the database ADO.NET is used.
MI is a mobile application written in C# and run on the web server. It is separated from Data Access Layer, Graphic User Interface, business logic. MI has an installation module.

Tools and Technologies

Visual Studio .Net 2005
C# and ASP.NET
C#/VB and mobile technology
C# and XML Web-service
MS SQL Server 2000/2005
Internet Information Services
Compact SQL database

Benefits

The application allowed users to operatively work with goods at warehouses, create reports about quantities of goods sold and amount of revenue obtained as well as operatively eliminate goods shortage at warehouses.
Post development support was provided to the customer in order to implement new features and improvements requested by end users after some experience in using the system.
Documentation supplied as a part of delivery package covers all aspects of the system, including hardware/software requirements and configuration, deployment guide, configuration guide, migration guide and user manual.