Your bin-stock program runs on a visit cycle, so every customer site is dark between stops. Arda puts a durable scannable card on each bin, and a scan fires the reorder whether or not your rep is standing there. You keep the account, the pricing, the product and the route.
Your first 10 cards are free. Works with the order system you already run, no EDI project.
Trusted on the shop floors your reps serve, including Rossmonster, Austere and Fat Fender.
A stockout at your customer's bin is a service failure with your name on it, and the fix is a hotshot run or a will-call on a class C part where the freight costs more than the line earns. Arda is inventory replenishment software that moves the replenishment signal off your rep's clipboard and onto the bin. The card carries the min, the max and the supplier, and a scan fires the reorder the moment the bin runs low: on the days your rep is on site, and on the days nobody is.
The bin fires its own reorder, so a slipped route or a stop cut short no longer means a dark site until next cycle.
Card quantities come off real burn rate and your delivery lead time, so the bin covers the gap between drops instead of a guess at it.
Min, max, supplier and quantity live on the card at the bin. A new rep inherits a running program rather than rebuilding one.
"Their system should be digitized, for their sake and ours."
a procurement lead describing a supplier's bin program, r/procurement, 2024
Eight sites on a two-week cycle, a scanner in one hand and a bin-stock sheet in the other. The rep walks the crib, sees what is under min, writes the order and drives on. The whole program depends on that visit landing, and it does not always land. One buyer on r/procurement put the ask to distributors plainly: "Can you spend 5-10 hours a week hustling around my building? And still support your other customers?" When a bin runs dry between stops, the fix is an emergency delivery on a class C part, and the freight eats a year of margin on that line.
Bin stock runs on a visit cycle, so every site is blind between stops. If the route slips a week, or the fourth stop runs long and the fifth gets cut, nothing signals the shortfall. The first anyone hears is the customer calling to say they are out, and that call comes to you rather than to their own buyer.
Your rep writes down what was on the shelf at 9 a.m. Tuesday. By Thursday the customer's second shift has pulled a case for a rush job and told nobody. Every hand that reaches into the bin between visits widens the gap between the program and the shelf.
Min and max levels, which bins matter, which contact to call: all of it lives in a notebook and a route rhythm. Hand that territory to someone new and the next 90 days go on rebuilding what the last rep already knew.
Arda's inventory replenishment software for industrial and MRO distributors puts a scannable card on every bin you replenish at a customer site. The customer's floor scans it when the bin runs low, the reorder lands in the order path you already run at the quantity you already agreed, and both sides watch the same card move. Your rep still owns the account. The rep just stops being the sensor.
A line card is not a shelf. It is a dozen very different reorder problems sharing one crib, and the reason a single visit cycle fits none of them. Group the bins by how they move and each card sizes itself. The same card works whether the stock is yours until it is consumed or the customer's the moment it lands.
Every bin in the program gets a durable card with a QR code. Anyone on the customer's floor scans it with the phone already in their pocket. No scanner gun to issue, no login to provision, no training visit to schedule.
The scan fires a reorder at the agreed quantity, to you, in the order path you already run. Nobody types a purchase order and nobody waits for the next visit.
Pulled, on order, restocked, on every bin at every site. Your program manager sees the whole territory. The customer's floor lead sees their own crib.
Each card carries the numbers you already agreed with the account: the reorder point, min and max, the two-bin system your program probably already runs, and the safety stock that covers your delivery lead time. The math lives on the bin instead of in a rep's notebook.
Card the bins at a single crib this week and let the scans come in. No EDI mapping, no contract for the customer to sign, no rollout project to schedule against your route.
Programs die when the customer's team will not use them. Arda holds because scanning the card is the fastest way for that team to get more of what they just used.
No hardware on the customer's wall and no software for their IT to approve. A card on the bin and a phone.
Priced by card, not by seat, so you never ration logins to hold your program cost down.
The reorder lands where your orders already land, alongside an EDI 850 or a rep-entered order. Your pricing and your fulfilment do not move.
You roll this out crib by crib, not once. There is no implementation project standing between you and the next site.
The stop stops being a walking round. The order is already placed when you arrive, so the visit is about what else the account needs.
Every bin at every account in one view, and a program that survives a territory change.
Scan the bin, get more. The person who used the last box is the person who fires the reorder.
These are manufacturers running Arda on their own shelves, not distributors running it for customers. They are the kind of sites your reps serve, and the motion they replaced is the one you are trying to replace: a person walking to bins to work out what needs ordering. Same card, other side of the counter.
Heavy-industry fabricator of custom trucks and metalwork. A manager used to walk the floor every week to work out what needed reordering, the same walk your rep makes down a crib. Project manager Anthony Olivas: "I just take 10 minutes at the end of the day to go around the shop, collect the cards, and now I know exactly what needs to be ordered. It used to take two or three hours a week."
Read the Assembly Industrial case study →
Custom vehicle shop, after two failed ERP implementations. The card motion held where heavier software did not, which is the objection every distributor raises after watching a platform get bought, rolled out and quietly abandoned.
Read the Fat Fender case study →Overland vehicle builder. Cards went on 100% of the supplies they stock inside a year, one shelf at a time, with no implementation project.
Read the Rossmonster case study →Distributors are not choosing between Arda and their ERP. They are choosing between the program they run today, a platform with an integration project attached, and a card on the bin.
| Arda | Clipboard bin stock | Enterprise VMI platform | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Replenishment signal | A scan at the bin, by whoever emptied it | The rep's walk on visit day | EDI 852 consumption data out of the customer's system |
| Between visits | Continuous, every site, every day | None. The site is dark until the next stop | Only where the customer's system records the pull |
| Who can scan | Anyone on the customer's floor. Unlimited users | The rep, on site | Named users, usually licensed |
| Rollout per account | One afternoon, one crib | Immediate, but it does not scale past the route | An integration project before the first bin |
| Cost model | $1 a card, unlimited users, $0 for your first 10 | Free, until the emergency runs start | Licence plus integration, sized for large programs |
| Works with your order system | Yes. Lands alongside an EDI 850 or a rep-entered order | Re-keyed by hand | Yes, once mapped |
| Fits a small account | Yes. A ten-bin crib is a viable program | Only if route density supports the stop | Rarely. The economics assume volume |
Weighing named tools rather than whole approaches? The Arda Comparison Hub has side-by-side breakdowns.
No implementation project. Card one crib and the loop is running.
Free plan, no card required to try it. Paid plans add a 7-day trial.
Splices in alongside QuickBooks, NetSuite, Odoo, Xero and more. No rip and replace.
Every hand on the customer's floor can scan without adding to your cost.
Pick the account that calls you most and card the bins that run dry first. No EDI mapping, no contract for the customer to sign, no rollout project scheduled against your route. The program is live the same day.
Free plan, unlimited users, no implementation project.
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