S&B Textiles was making purchasing and pricing decisions without reliable cost data. We built a perpetual inventory system tied to the dyeing recipe — delivering real-time cost tracking and later migrated it to SQL Server and C#.
S&B Textiles, a fabric dyeing manufacturer, was facing a persistent and growing financial problem. The cost of dyes and chemicals consumed in their dyeing process was being calculated manually — a process that was slow, inaccurate, and consistently producing delayed information. As a result, accounts payable was increasing and management had no reliable real-time picture of input costs or inventory levels. The business was making purchasing and pricing decisions without the data to back them up.
We reviewed the organization’s operations and identified the dyeing recipe as the critical control point in the cost chain. Every dye and chemical issuance in the production process was tied to a specific recipe — meaning the recipe was not just a production document, it was the key to accurate cost tracking. Once we understood this, the path to a solution was clear.
We designed and implemented a perpetual inventory system in Microsoft Access, built around the dyeing recipe as its central organizing key. Every issuance of dyes and chemicals was logged through the system against a unique recipe ID, creating an unbroken audit trail from raw material to finished fabric.
All dye and chemical issuances logged against a unique recipe ID — linking every cost to the job that incurred it.
Quantity on hand updated automatically after every issuance — giving the store team a live balance of all materials at any point.
Each recipe generated an automated cost-based target price, removing guesswork from production pricing decisions.
Management reports filterable by date, customer, colour, or recipe — available on demand without manual compilation.
As the business grew and requirements became more demanding, we migrated the entire system from Microsoft Access to SQL Server, rebuilding the front-end application in C# with Windows Forms. The migration preserved all existing functionality while delivering the performance, scalability, and data integrity that a production environment at scale requires.
Microsoft Access has practical limits on concurrent users, data volume, and transactional reliability. By moving to SQL Server as the backend and C# Windows Forms as the interface, the system could support more users, larger datasets, and the robustness expected of a production manufacturing environment.
The shift from manual processes to an automated system transformed how S&B Textiles understood and controlled its production costs. Accurate, timely cost information replaced delayed and unreliable manual tallies. Just-in-time purchasing became possible — reducing inventory carrying costs by eliminating the over-ordering that had compensated for poor visibility. Accounts payable stabilized as cost tracking caught up with operational reality.
The system also served as the foundation for ongoing operational improvement initiatives, giving management a reliable data platform to build on.