1 INTRODUCTION
General Introduction
Problem Background
Most SMEs are unable to gain an edge over their competitors due to lack of inventory management skills. In addition, a company with poor inventory management may face underproduction, overproduction, and inaccurate inventory (Mat & Kadir, 2016). James Ng'ang'a (2013) suggested four factors that influence the effectiveness of inventory management: bureaucratic procurement processes, financing, skills and knowledge acquired by staff, and trade documentation and records.
While the manual inventory management system can help document inventory and sales data, it requires longer processing time and is very likely to cause record discrepancy. Indeed, improving Sharifah Food's inventory management requires an automated inventory management system that can take orders, manage orders from customers, agents, and dropshippers, manage stock inventories, and perform sales reporting. Additionally, since the company primarily uses WhatsApp to take orders, the system will be integrated with an e-commerce platform to provide a quick and easy way to view the company's product catalog and place orders from the e-commerce platform.
Therefore, a mobile e-commerce application will be developed that will interface with the computerized inventory management system and will facilitate the order-taking process by making it easier for customers to place orders from mobile devices. The development of this system will undoubtedly solve the problems of the manual inventory management system.
Problem Statement
- Inaccurate inventory records ensue from human errors
- Difficult to perform sales analysis
- Lack of feature to manage agents and dropshippers
The problem of inaccurate inventory records may arise due to poor communication among staff (Abisoye, et al., 2013). Others will then assume the items are still available, resulting in incorrect inventory records. Chuang and Oliva (2015) find that a firm with 29 percent inaccurate inventory data results in an estimated profit loss of 10 percent.
In addition, the study of Shaban, etc. 2021) found that a loss in revenue of more than 1 percent of sales and more than 3 percent of gross profit can result from inaccurate inventory records. These studies show that documentation of accurate inventory data is essential to maintaining or scaling company profitability. Therefore, it is important to conduct sales analysis to gain insight into customer segmentation, performance, product popularity, etc.
Since Sharifah Food runs an MLM system consisting of agents and dropshippers, their management is essential. However, popular general inventory management systems such as Shopify (Shopify, 2021), Odoo (Odoo, 2021), Ecwid (Ecwid, 2021), and WooCommerce (WooCommerce, 2021) were found to not support agent and dropshipper management functionality.
Project Objectives
- Main Objective
- Specific Objectives
Proposed Solution
Furthermore, the system can be divided into two parts: the e-commerce platform and the inventory management system. The user can access the e-commerce platform through web and mobile applications, while the administrator can access the inventory management system through the web application. The workflow in the computerized warehouse management system starts with the user or administrator visiting the web or mobile applications.
When a user or an administrator performs tasks or functionalities that require a back-end server, the application sends the request to the API through an internet connection. After the API receives the request, it sends the request to the back-end server and the back-end server will process the request. In addition, the back-end server can access the database to retrieve the stored data, change it or add new data as needed.
After that, the web API forwards the request to the back-end server, provided that the authentication of the request has passed. When the back-end server receives the request, it performs some operations on the data and stores it in the database.
Proposed Approach
In the initial analysis phase, a comprehensive literature review of the warehouse management system's system development process is carried out. The design plan, such as a use case diagram, is created from the user requirements identified in the analysis phase. In the design phase, the system's architecture and interfaces are planned and designed.
In the implementation phase, a prototype is developed and shown to the user to check if the system prototype meets the requirements. Once the user has evaluated the prototype, the user's feedback and comments are sent to the developer. With the user's feedback and comments, the conflicting or ambiguous requirements can be easily resolved.
The user is then asked again to evaluate the subsequent prototype and provide feedback. After the user approves the final prototype, the complete inventory management system is implemented, marking the completion of the project.
Scope of Project
- Platform
- Target Users
- Direct Customers, Agents and Dropshippers
- Stockist
- Features Covered
- E-commerce Platform (Direct Customer, Agent and Dropshipper) a) Register as Customer
- Inventory Management System (Admin) a) Login
- Features Not Covered
The users can register as an agent or dropshipper by filling the registration form on the website. The users can view all products and promotions through the website and mobile application. The users can view the details of the item by selecting the item while browsing.
The users can search for items by entering the keywords of the products. i) Order history. The users can learn more about the company, such as the company's background, goals, culture, activities, etc. m) Contact Us. The admin can view the lists of agents and dropshippers and their respective orders to confirm their sales performance.
In addition, the admin can also view, accept and reject the applications of the agents and dropshippers. g) Shipping fee management. The admin can manage and create discount codes that can be applied while making payments on the e-commerce platform.
Introduction
Inventory Management System
- Manual Inventory Management System
- Computerised Inventory Management System
- Existing Computerized Inventory Management Systems
- Lazada Adopted from
- WeNiaga
- Conclusion
Users can easily track their orders with the order management feature provided by the senangKIRA system. Additionally, users can set to show or hide a product in their e-commerce catalog. Users can view a list of their customers on Shopify's customer management page.
On this page, users can add a new customer by filling in the customer details. Users can view their sales summary after logging into the inventory management system. In addition, users can filter by various criteria such as product categories, buyer type, currency and sections.
Users can easily manage their orders by accessing the WeNiaga order management page. Users can filter various criteria like seller type, buyer type and order status.
- Inventory Analysis Techniques
- ABC Analysis
- HML Analysis
- Safety Stock (SS) Analysis
- Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) Analysis
- Conclusion
- Database Transaction Management and Concurrency Control
- Lock-based Concurrency Control
- Timestamp-based Concurrency Control
- Optimistic Concurrency Control
- Conclusion
- Software Development Methodologies
- Waterfall Methodology
- V-Model Methodology
- RAD Prototyping Methodology
- Agile Methodology
- Conclusion
- Summary
- Introduction
- System Development Methodology
- Planning Phase
- Prototype Development Phase
- System Testing Phase
- System Deployment Phase
- Project Plan
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
- Gantt Chart
- Development Tools
- Language a. LESS
- Framework / Library a. Ant Design
- Database a. PostgreSQL
- Integrated Development Environment a. Visual Studio Code
- Other Development Tools a. Figma
- Testing Tools
- Summary
- Introduction
- Requirement Discovery
- Requirement Specification
- Functional Requirements
- Non-functional Requirements
- Use Case
- Use Case Diagram
- Use Case Descriptions .1 Login as User
- Summary
The system must allow the user to log in to the e-commerce applications using a registered account. The system must allow the user to choose one payment method. f) The system must allow the logged in user to enter a discount code for a discount. g). The system must allow the administrator to log into the warehouse management system using a registered account.
The system must allow the administrator to accept or reject agent and dropshipper registrations. f) The system shall inform the applicant about the agent and dropshipper registration status via email after the administrator has accepted or rejected the registration. The system must display the business insight on the dashboard of the warehouse management system.
5 SYSTEM DESIGN
Introduction
System Architecture Design
It includes the UI for the administrators and users to connect and interact with the inventory management system and the e-commerce platform. As for the presentation level, only the admin can access the inventory management system via the web application in this system. The inventory management systems and e-commerce platforms connect to the backend server via Axios, a promise-based HTTP client library, which helps transfer the asynchronous requests from the front end to the API endpoints in the backend server.
On the other hand, the data plane is the lowest level that stores all the data and information. The main objective of the data layer is to reduce the coupling of the data stored with the system server that processes the logic. In terms of the data tier, PostgreSQL was used as the database that provides the data to the backend servers in terms of the data tier.
In addition, Redis was also used to cache the continuously retrieved data, so that the backend server does not need to retrieve the same data frequently, which allows the database to have a better performance. The logical layer, also known as the application layer, is designed to bridge the communication between the presentation layer and data layer. It acts as the middle layer to receive the request from the presentation layer and process the data obtained from the data layer, so that the data in the data layer can be independent of the server.
This logic layer includes Django's back-end servers and its REST framework for the inventory management system and e-commerce platform. In terms of the logical level, the support system of the inventory management system and the e-commerce platforms are separated into two systems to reduce the connection between the two systems, allowing better maintenance between the two systems. The backend is built with Django, a python-based web framework that adopts the MTV architecture.
In addition, Django REST framework was used to develop RESTful API to interact with the front-end applications. In addition, some additional third-party applications were used to facilitate the functions of the inventory management system and e-commerce platforms. Cloudinary was used to store the images, such as the thumbnails and the images of Sharifah Food's products and packaging.
Entity-Relationship Diagram
- Conceptual ERD
- Logical ERD
- Physical ERD
Additionally, the Gmail SMTP server was used to send the notifications to the customer for order updates and updates about the agent and dropshipper status. Moreover, it also provides the normalized tables of the conceptual ERD to reduce the data redundancy in such a way that the database will not suffer from the update anomalies, such as insertion, deletion and modification anomalies.
Data Dictionary
Activity Diagrams
- Inventory Management System
- Login As Admin
- Reset Password
- Manage Product Stock
- Manage Promotional Packages
- Manage Agent and Dropshipper
- Manage Agent and Dropshipper Registrations
- Manage Shipping Fee
- Manage Pickup Location
- Manage Discount
- Manage Order
- View Business Insights
- View Inventory Analysis
- Search
- E-commerce Platform
- Login as User
- Register as Customer
- Register as Agent or Dropshipper
- Browse Products and Promotions
