Development of Inventory Management System with Perishable Goods and its Future Prospect to Implement Decision Support Capability

Abstract

Recently, food service industry including restaurants and fast-food chains has been explosive growth, so the reduction of labor cost and the devices to promote purchasing rate and sales figures are extremely important task for each store. To resolve these issues, some inventory management systems with Point-of-Sales (POS) have been previously developed. These systems make the improvement of service quality and sales possible by reducing the labor cost of staffs and the opportunity loss on peak time. However they need expensive specialized equipments and maintenance cost, so only large chains can introduce such systems. The purpose of this paper is to improve operational efficiency of restaurants regardless of their scale. Especially this paper develops inventory management system cooperating with POS and automatic menu-ordering capabilities with Web technology. This paper aims the provision of services cheaply and efficiently by using personal potable digital devices with Wi-Fi and touch-sensitive panel as menu-ordering device. The system can visually-present sales information depending on seasonal movements, goods, and customers, so it might be possible to support the reduction of disposal loss and inventory amounts.