Design and Development of IoT Based Inventory Management System for Small Business

Abstract

Nowadays, everything is made simpler with information and communication technological advancements. The Internet has been part of human lives with the rapid increase on the usage of internet over the past decade. With these technological advancements, almost everything around us is now automated. Humans tend to carry out their daily activities via portable smart devices or simply said a smart phone. It is preferable to track and monitor using these devices rather than perform it manually. This resulted in the rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) technology and relevant markets. Low cost IoT products have made access to IoT much easier and desirable. These low cost IoT devices and related technologies are widely used in areas such as educational, transportation, tracking, inventory management and many more. IoT has been a game changer in the inventory management system. However, some IoT developed inventory management systems have its own advantages and disadvantages. The use of Arduino and RFID in the inventory management system lacks in some areas including hardware limitations. In conjunction to the limitation of using Arduino and RFID technology, this project aims to develop an IoT based inventory management system that incorporates the uses of a NodeMCU and a Load Cell. In comparison of the NodeMCU to an Arduino, the NodeMCU stands out with the built in Wi-Fi module with much higher processor and additional properties of it being much smaller. While the use of a Load Cell is much more convenient as to suit all kinds of inventory management needs compared to the use of RFID that suits better to larger scale businesses with larger inventory and massive stocks. Towards the end, this project is expected to ease inventory management by the implementation of IoT. This project should generate stock count automatically and is accessible online. Data history and status should also be generated with notifications on stocks running low. There are several things that can be upgraded for future recommendation for design. The project has only one compartment to store the stock so in the future recommendation, more space/drawer that can be used to store product. Also, for the weight maximum in one drawer that is 1 kg only. It is unusable because 1kg can only put light objects, some small business owners store their stocks with a larger weight, hence the future recommendation is that the maximum value of the drawer will be upgraded to 5 kg or 10 kg.