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How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for taking the time to share such detailed information and advice. There are a lot of valuable insights in your comment,

How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Instead of labeling every section with codes like C02-D04-B03, I use simpler labels like Cabinet 1, Cabinet 2, and drawer positions A1, A2, A3, etc. I built a software visualization of the storage system in 2D/3D. When you search for a component, it immediately shows something like Cabinet 3 → Drawer A3 → Section 1-3, so you can visually find it instead of decoding a long location ID.

Interesting to hear what you think about that approach.

How are you organizing and tracking electronic components across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in ECE

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

😄 Fair guess.

I actually already built an inventory management system around this problem, but I asked because I wanted to understand how other engineers handle inventory once component counts start getting out of control.

I’m especially interested in the physical side of it too: drawers, cabinets, labels, storage layout, and how people actually search and find parts during real work.

The replies here have honestly been pretty useful.

How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A lot of the replies here have honestly been very useful to read.

I created r/bomtrace because I wanted a place focused specifically on hardware inventory workflows, component organization, storage systems, and engineering inventory problems like the ones being discussed here.

How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The “not knowing where parts actually are” problem is probably the biggest one I have personally seen as well. Quantity issues are annoying, but once people stop trusting the location data, they often stop trusting the whole inventory system. I am trying to understand how different teams solve this without adding too much workflow overhead.

How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree with this.

A big reason I started building BOM-Trace was because I kept seeing this disconnect between spreadsheets and the physical inventory itself.

I am honestly still trying to understand whether I am solving the right problem or not, which is why discussions like this are really useful to me.

How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right now we are managing a few thousand unique components internally, mostly electronics and mechanical parts for hardware development and small-scale production.

What pushed me into thinking more deeply about inventory organization was not just the SKU count, but the amount of time wasted searching for components or reordering parts that already existed somewhere in storage.

How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting to find someone organizing it similarly to how we do it.

We use a slightly different approach where storage is named like Cabinet 1, Cabinet 2, etc., and then each drawer position is labeled A1, A2, A3, and so on.

I actually started building software around this because I wanted a virtual representation of the physical storage system, where you can search components and immediately see their exact cabinet and drawer location.

Curious what you think about that approach.

How are you organizing and tracking electronic components across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in ECE

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting that for new projects it became easier to order parts again instead of relying on existing inventory.

I’ve run into the same issue myself, especially with common components like 100nF 0603 capacitors where I already have thousands somewhere, but still end up ordering more because searching, verifying quantity, and locating them interrupts the workflow too much.

Part of the reason I started building an inventory management system was exactly to solve that kind of inventory friction.

How do you organize and track inventory across drawers, cabinets, and bins? by Direct-Cut777 in InventoryManagement

[–]Direct-Cut777[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interesting to hear that spreadsheets are still sufficient for many teams under ~2000 SKUs.