Original Date: 11/03/1996
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

An Inventory Management Information System (IMIS) was developed and implemented by the Data Systems Research and Development (DSRD) Department at Oak Ridge. IMIS provides a fully integrated inventory system for tracking the movement, monitoring the process steps, and recording the storage locations of the thousands of waste containers. A common network connects widely separated process areas. Bar code readers are combined with computer terminals and printers to provide automated data acquisition and reporting in real time to the various user groups.

The hardware consists of off-the-shelf computer terminals, printers, interactive and portable bar code readers, and a UNIX host mainframe. The IMIS software was developed by the DSRD Department since no software existed in the exact configuration that could provide the data acquisition and management inventory capabilities required for Oak Ridge. The system is mostly modular, and the UNIX operating system facilitates the user interface and also renders it transparent. The tracking can be timely conducted with the telecommunications network.

IMIS provides for accurate and easy data collection in the field, automatically looks for errors in the reported data, improves the reliability of the data, reduces the handling of the data, provides a current tracking status, provides access to inventory history, greatly improves data processing and reporting, and is widely available to the user community. The container inventory and tracking is estimated to be four times faster using half the personnel, and will have an accuracy of greater than 99%. Potential savings of over $100,000 per inventory performed are possible.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.