We were recently approached by a plastics distributor who was looking for a simple way to reclassify material using the VISCO software. Sometimes they buy material under one product ID/product description and either combine it with another material or just reclassify that product and sell it as another product.
They explained that when buying and selling scrap material it is common for the supplier to classify it one way but when they receive the material and analyze they realize it in fact makes more sense to sell it as something else. For example, if they purchase material described as PET green flake, and then they receive the material in and realize it has some paper mixed in and different colors they may just decide to sell as PET Floorsweeps instead.
Traditionally using the system to do this would be a labor intensive project because it would require the user to adjust inventory down on PET green flake and create negative costs to zero out any costs which have already been received for that material (This might include Freight and packaging costs in addition to the cost of the material itself.) Then they would have to create a new Purchase Order for Floorsweeps with themselves as the vendor and use the Purchase Price as equivalent to the cost of PET green flake that they just zero’d out. Then receive that Purchase Order into inventory so they can sell it.
By working closely with the customer, we were able to create a tool using Microsoft Excel that would actually allow them to search through existing inventory and reclassify material turning it into a different product transferring the cost along with it. In actuality, behind the scene we are following the same steps that they were doing manually, but it has all been done manually and hidden from the user.
They are now using the reclassification tool to easily move inventory from one product ID/Product Description to another and bringing the cost along with it.
