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Thx - have updated profile and emailed you.
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Hi Roger,
Thanks for that wonderful project description; I now have a new scenario to challenge my advanced students with ... uhhh ... I should say that I don't have any students right now [1], and that my last "advanced" student is still sulking after receiving some "tough love" regarding their slacker attitude.
Some aspects of that interesting problem remind me of a massive prototype project I did for BHP Australia's Asian Division (Hong Kong) which was done in Win 2005 and Excel using VBA. During the construction period of a multi-lender financed private-sector power-plant, various complex (recursive) calculations need to be performed; the amount of money actually required for direct construction costs is based on a datum called the "s-curve" that, for each month of the project, shows a percentage of total direct construction costs. That's all very straightforward; where it gets tricky is the calculation of compounding interest on the lenders' monies (each lender has a different share of the "pot," each has different interest rates) ... not only must interest be paid on monies spent, but also paid on monies unspent.
cheers, Bill
[1] reasons complex for that, but do involve living as an expatriate in a country currently run by a military junta after a coup ... resulting in it being prudent to carefully conform to the laws of the land regarding expats and employment, and ever more difficult (if not impossible if you are not married to a citizen) to get an official work-permit.
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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I can't imagine living under such conditions, Bill; it makes my complicated life seem rather mundane by comparison. But when you do get some students, let me know what they come up with for a solution. I am reminded of the days when I was in school, in a Control Systems class. My instructor, unknown to me at the time, was the chief engineer for developing the guidance and control systems of the Phalanx gun system, and he was having some really challenging stability problems with the control equations - the prototype tended to "off the rails" for no apparent reason, and he and his team spent most days measuring and recording its behaviors.
I thought our test problems were oddly worded, and the sample values of angles and accelerations and voltages and such were unusually "real", as in academic circles they tend to use nicely rounded, even numbers for test values. These were decidedly not well behaved numbers. The entire final exam was an open-book, ten question test that we were given a week to complete. The answer to each question provided the necessary input to solve the next, so missing one was unacceptable.
I found out later that he had posed the challenges he was dealing with at work as a challenge to students, first to define the actual response transform of the system, given input command values and real world responses. Determine the transfer function of the closed loop system, identify the roots and the errant poles which cause the instability, calculate the pole shifting compensation factors necessary to bring the system into a stable state, and lastly, design a circuit to apply those corrections.
Most of us passed, and he went on to large bonuses for having solved the stability problems, never telling anyone at General Dynamics that he'd used the best of our exam solutions as a foundation for "his" solution to the problem. A creative approach to problem solving, I'd call it, though some might tag it "plagiarism."
Feel free to have your students, when you have some, solve my problem, and I might just be able to pay you something for it. 
Will Rogers never met me.
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Are you sure you all took the same exam 
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Easy: SAP.
Pros: It won't get you fired.
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Maybe so, but Roger's not in his 20's. He won't live long enough to see it actually work.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary Wheeler wrote: Maybe so, but Roger's not in his 20's. He won't live long enough to see it actually work.
I was going to comment on SAP as a CMMS but your comment sums it up perfectly 
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My running partner is in IT at our employer, and has been tangentially involved in migrating our line-of-business apps from our Oracle data bases over to the corporate IT's SAP system over the last several years. The last two words in that sentence sum up the situation perfectly.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.
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Software Zen: delete this;
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I would count that as a "Pro", too.
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I work for a Water Company, kinda.
We use Maximo to keep track of our stock, issue them for jobs, build up a cost. We also use it for works management.
This is not a recommendation, just saying what we use.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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Hi Bill,
Have you looked at Maximo or any other off-the-shelf CMMS systems? It's quite expensive (around £4,000 per User) but it does everything you could ever want when it comes to a full Maintenance system (Work Planning, Resource Scheduling, Asset Management, Inventory Management etc.). It can also do the Serial Number tracking on Parts while treating them under a common SKU (my background is in the pharma industry where this is a particular bugbear).
I was working on developing a system last year which was put on the back burner which predicts spares usage and recommends stocking levels based on historical &/or estimated failure rates. I would hope to get it finished by the end of the year. If you have any interest in that, let me know.
Dec.
Declan O'Brien
Aldolex Irl ltd
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Declan OBrien wrote: Hi Bill,
It's Roger.
/ravi
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Ha!!
I obviously had "Bill" on the brain after reading BillWoodruff's post!!
Sorry Roger 
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Declan OBrien wrote: I obviously had "Bill" on the brain
I forgive you, and, please, don't worry, it's usually not fatal.
cheers, Bill
«I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center» Kurt Vonnegut.
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We use Microsoft Dynamics NAV (with an LS Retail POS add-on) for our retail stores. It handles inventory and sales. It will cover your requirements, but it's not cheap to buy or implement.
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Have you checked Upwork.com or one of the other freelancer sites?
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To be honest, this sounds pretty simple to make. Am I missing something?
I could prolly do that for you.
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What do your competitors use?
Do you have a budget?
Do you have a staff to maintain the data?
Would you consider RFID tagging all 1,000 pieces of inventory.
setting up sensors on the egress locations to ALARM who ever is trying to remove the device,
to remind them to take the RFID off, and fill in the 3-5 Fields of info (who they are, why
they are taking it, what job, etc)?
I would want to bullet-proof the exiting of the inventory. Most of the time, people are too busy trying to avoid the alligators to remember they need to drain the swamp.
Most systems fail, not because the system does not work. But because it does not "flow" (catching things when they need to be caught, helping people to do the right thing), and then because of users or lack of ability to keep the information up to date.
Once the information is there, doing the things you suggested are a matter of:
- Do they need to be automated?
- Is it okay if it is a report or dashboard that shows the status?
Email me if you want to dig deeper.
We implement these kinds of solutions. We use tools that let you dump just about everything to Excel, and perform additional ad hoc analysis as you wish.
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Hmm ... that's just the kind of application that I write for my business "Simple Software By Design". I put a copy of your post in my idea folder! If, at some point, you'd like to discuss development of something like this I'd be glad to talk to you. Might take a few months to do with our present work load but on the surface seems like exactly what we do.
Send to "postmaster@simplesoftwarebydesign.com" if you'd like to talk.
-Clockmeister
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As a matter of fact...
One of the companies I work for imports and distributes auto parts. We have about 10,000 SKUs and have developed a system in-house that does almost everything in your requirements list. The only thing missing is serial number tracking. Not only does it suggest orders - based on your historical usage of a SKU - but, it allows you to enter quotes from multiple vendors for the same SKU, and suggests which vendor to buy from based on price. It is a Microsoft Access Front-end and SQL Server back-end. We don't sell it, but here is the good part: We have an Access-only version for customers.
In addition to the inventory control and purchasing features, it also has job tracking. Not only that, it allows you to create and save custom jobs that can be called up with the click of a mouse, that have a list of parts (and quantities) that you have specified for that particular job.
It also includes a complete, searchable catalog. Search for parts in the catalog, and with the click of a button you can add them to a job or a suggested PO.
Obviously the program is geared towards automotive repair shops, but since it doesn't care what you enter into inventory or the catalog, it could actually be adapted to virtually any business. You could actually have some fun with it - naming jobs after exotic cars, etc. Email me if you'd like to take a look at it.
Ron Hinds
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I could build you a MS based solution utilising Access as the main hub and using Excel and Word to generate forms and letters. I build systems and tools like the one you describe for my company tracking activity, assets, forecasting and automating reporting and admin processes. I have also integrated data capture using smartphones into a central database using a third party company, which is much easier than getting people to sit in front of a computer. Depending on the scope it shouldn't take more than a few weeks, if your interested then I can put a prototype together this week.
Peter Deacon
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The Professor is in his laboratory putting his hypothesis to the final test. His subject,
Ctenocephalides canis (dog flea), there on the microscope stage, before him as he peers
down the 3.5 macular objective ... In his notebook he takes notes on observed behavior.
He makes a scribble "Day 01, subject cC_01, have observed reticence in previous subjects
to respond to my command after six tests have been conducted. Assert/confirm/advise/conclude."
He goes on, on a new line.
"Today cC_02 ... full battery ... Experiment begin Ti:09:21:00"
The test subject has been fastened to the stage floor by a hair tether and two drops of
crazy glue. This is to locate him in less grandiose motion patterns while the experiment
ensues. Reaching onto the stage with two forceps, one in each hand, the Dr. grasps the
abdomen of cC_02 with the left and the right forelimb with the right ... and slowly pulls
the right forelimb off of the subject.
"Jump flea!" he says to the insect. And the flea jumps. The Dr. marks down in his
notebook:
- test 01 ... loss of right forelimb results in no loss of ability to perform command.
Subject jumps. -
The experiment continues. The Dr. now again grabs the abdomen of cc_02 with his left
forcep and proceeds to grasp the middle leg of the right side of the subject and
gently pulls the entire leg off then lowers his head close to the stage and says "Jump
flea!" And the flea jumps. He makes a mark in his notebook:
- test 02 ... loss of thoracic leg right results in no loss of ability to perform
command. Subject jumps. -
The experiment continues. This time the Dr. with his left forcep again grasps
the flea but this time by the pronotum of the thorax and with his other forcep grasps the
rear right leg and gives it a tug so as to completely dissarticulate the coxa removing it
entirely from the thorax, then commands the flea to jump. "Jump flea!" And
the flea jumps. The Dr. marks down in his notebook:
-test 03 ... loss of right rear leg results in absolutely no change in behavior and the
subject obeys the command. Subject Jumps. -
And the experiment continues to the left side. The Dr. takes the left forelimb of the
flea into his left forcep and grasps the abdomen again with the right forcep and gives
the leg a yank removing it from the now only two-limbed flea. He lowers his head close to
the stage and says "Jump flea"! And the flea still jumps. The Dr. marks down
in his notebook:
-test 04 ... loss of left thoracic forelimb results in no change in behavior. Subject
responds to command to jump with positive jump twitch. Subject jumps. -
Continuing, to the second-to-last remaining limb, the left middle appendage, the Dr.
grasps it with his left forcep and quickly snatches it from the thorax. He lowers his
head and speaks to the flea "Jump flea!" And the flea jumps. He writes down in his
notebook:
-test 05 ... loss of left middle thoracic appendage results in no change in behavior.
Subject responds to command to jump. Subject jumps. -
Finally, the last test in the battery. The Dr. is primed to finish and knows with only
one more limb available, this is it, experimentally. So, he grasps the remaining limb,
the left rear leg with his left forcep and goes back to grasping the elytra of the thorax
with his right forcep, and seperates the leg from the insect. He leans in to the stage
and issues the final command "Jump flea!" And the flea just sits there. The Dr. marks
down in his notebook:
-test 06 ... loss of left rear leg results in marked change in Ctenocephalides canis
cC_02 behavior. Subject does not repsond to command to jump. -
The doctor jots down a few page width slashes and scribbles on a new line under a another
new line entitled "Experimental conclusions":
"End experiment T0:10:00:00"
"Scientific method applied to subject with respect to elliciting behaviors through
issuance of verbal commands at microscope stage height of little variance results in
skewed test result, the induction of which lead this experimenter to make a singlar
conclusion about the jumping observed in Ctenocephalides canis (dog flea):
When all limbs from Ctenocephalides canis have been removed, subject goes completey
deaf."
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Was this a joke?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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