sdmay20-25 • Consumer-Aware Warehouse Management

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Senior Design Team sdmay20-25 • Consumer-Aware Warehouse Management

Problem Statement

The company Crafty desires a software solution to assist in managing stock of its warehouses for distribution of food stuffs to its area clients. Currently, the determination of when to order more goods and restock is done manually and can take hours that can be better spent. It is a tedious task that has the potential for human failure to take into account all factors in the future needs of a certain stock of goods. Thus, Crafty occasionally misses out on sales to potential and current clients, decreasing their profit margin.

Proposed Solution Approach

The company, Crafty, has proposed a potential solution in the form of a prediction and forecasting software that will take in all the available data points and determine what goods need restocking and when. It has been suggested that the implementation use a form of machine learning to determine the optimal conditions of ordering more stock. This software solution will eliminate the tedium of constantly checking when goods need to be restocked, thereby decreasing tedious workload on employees, allowing for prediction of increased sales, and eliminating situations where sales might have been missed due to human errors.

Project Need

The need for forecasting software to predict the optional restocking schedule for a warehouse boils down to reduction in waste and missed sales. Without this product, Crafty may allow goods to go unused and spoil in warehouses if the incorrect amount of goods are ordered and go unshipped. Alternatively, if too few goods are ordered, when a client calls the lack of goods represents a missed sales opportunity for crafty and thus a reduction in the overall profit margin. These basic needs represent the basics of business: customer satisfaction and maximal sales.

Project Description

To fulfill the solution for the pain point, Crafty has reached out to Iowa State's Senior Design course to partner with senior students to create a proof of concept software for prediction of automatic optimal goods ordering for its warehouses.

Project Artifacts and Outputs

This project will have a number of artifacts and outputs at its conclusion that will be distributed over both Crafty's needs and SE 491 needs.