The History Of Warehouse Inventory Management Software

By Author: Ethan Mudgett
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Imagine needing to count every product in your warehouse manually because your barcode system stopped working. Though this might seem like a suicide-inducing type of hassle to you, for business owners and employees of just a few decades ago, this was simply a part of their everyday lives. They all had to manually check and re-check their inventory to make sure that they have a record of everything.

Since then technology really has done wonders for the way people live and interact with each other. You no longer have to write long letters by hand and wait for months for a reply, or go to telegram offices to send a short message. And for warehouse employees, gone are the days when you had to climb shelves and boxes just to count every product. But where did warehouse management systems come from?

In the Beginning

If you take the Bible as an example, then Adam would be the source of the first inventory management system when he named all the animals and kept track of them. A good example of failure in inventory management can also be found in the Bible, when Noah forgot all about the unicorns and all the other ...
... species that didn’t survive the flood.

On a more historical note, though, merchants during the Industrial Revolution had it bad. They had to manually count all of the products that went in and out of their store, they had to make sure none got stolen – which is hard because they’re always counting – and they also had to make sure that other merchants weren’t ripping them off. How do you do all that manually?

The Start of It All

That was the question Herman Hollerith wanted to answer in 1889, which is why he invented the punch card. This went on to become a great and very popular way to keep track of complex data that came with inventory management. It was so successful Hollerith went on to form IBM. However, it was still too slow compared to modern warehouse inventory software.

A group of business owners, mostly grocery store owners, realized that punch cards were much too slow for business needs, and their efforts resulted in the invention of barcodes in the 1960s. The Universal Product Code, as it was known then, became the standard warehouse inventory software of that time.

And today, with the advances in technology, small business inventory management software is no longer limited to barcodes. Inventory software can now be integrated with the entire business supply chain and order fulfillment process, making everything much easier and more accurate. For more info, you can visit ehow.com/about_5518506_importance-inventory-management-systems.html.