Inventory Control System
Inventory control systems over the years have advanced to great lengths that these days, tracking of inventory has gone to the most specific level, which is to each item. While it used to be that systems that control and manage inventory were still item centric, the level of attention given to each and every item in current control systems has gotten further that each item is tracked down to the time that it is purchased: with each beep that a scanned bar code at the checkout counter produced, a report is sent to the system that yet another item has left the store, and therefore one less product in the inventory. These reports are given in real time, with every bar code scanned, and this shows how advanced the technology of inventory control has gone.
In the olden days of business, each product was also tracked down, but done in a manual manner. The inventory control systems of the olden days depended much on the diligence of the shop owner ion tallying each and every purchase made, and based on daily figures, derive future needs. The methods were very much dependent on the vigilance of the inventory keeper, which means any incident that is not related to sales but contributes to inventory figures, like for example, a theft, cannot be explained and therefore is just written off as a loss to the company.
The system of inventory management improved in the years after the Second World War, with the development of technologies to mark items for sale. This, with the advancement of affordable laser technology in the 60s, made scanning an inevitable part of managing inventory. In the 1970s, UPC or the Universal Product Code was perfected, exponentially improving inventory control. In the 1990s, with the full explosion of software and computer technology, modern inventory control systems were finally implemented, with all processes, from ordering, monitoring of inventory, and tracking of purchases then back to reordering, keenly monitored.