Abstract: Inventory management of spares is one of the activities Zambia Air Force (ZAF) undertakes to ensure optimal serviceability state of equipment to effectively achieve its roles. This obligation could only be made possible by automating the current manual and paper based inventory system. A web based inventory management system using cloud architecture and barcode technology was proposed. A literature review was conducted on three technologies used in the inventory management that is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Barcode Technology and Near Field Communication (NFC). A review was also undertaken on the related works to identify the concept that could be adopted in the proposed system. A baseline study was performed to understand the challenges faced by ZAF in the inventory management of spares. The results of the baseline study were analyzed and found that the challenges were attributed to the current manual inventory management system mainly due to human errors, incorrect inventory reporting and pilferage of items. The proposed prototype system was developed and tested and proved to be faster, efficient and more reliable than the manual and paper based system.

Thomas Muyumba and Jackson Phiri, “A Web based Inventory Control System using Cloud Architecture and Barcode Technology for Zambia Air Force” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 8(11), 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2017.081117

@article{Muyumba2017,
title = {A Web based Inventory Control System using Cloud Architecture and Barcode Technology for Zambia Air Force},
journal = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
doi = {10.14569/IJACSA.2017.081117},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2017.081117},
year = {2017},
publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
volume = {8},
number = {11},
author = {Thomas Muyumba and Jackson Phiri}
}