Requirements checklist
What to ask for when choosing software for industrial sensor suppliers.
A checklist built from how industrial sensor suppliers work, to print or save as a PDF and bring to any supplier meeting.
What the software should cover
Tick each one that matters to your business.
- Sensor catalogue and equivalents
- Stock by variant and lot
- Cable and connector builds
- Calibration and certificates
- Blanket orders and releases
- Returns and maker claims
Roles that need their own access
Who logs in, and what each person may see or change.
- For counter and sales staff
- For the build bench
- For calibration technicians
- For stores
- For purchasing
Reports to ask for
Ask to see each one with your own sample data.
- Stock by variant and maker lot
- Yearly totals by balance and release
- Certificates issued by reference instrument
- Quotations lost for want of a variant
- Returns by lot and symptom
- Cordset builds repeated by customer
Systems it may need to connect to
Note which ones you already run.
- Accounting export
- Label printer
- Barcode scanner
Questions for any vendor
Put these to every supplier you are comparing.
- Can I see equivalents while quoting?
- Does stock show exact variants?
- How are cable builds stored?
- What does a calibration certificate record?
- How do blanket orders work?
- Can a faulty lot be traced to customers?
- Does it handle maker claims?
- Is there a web shop for buyers?
- How is our catalogue loaded?
- What does a demonstration cover?
Where the work usually breaks today
Circle the ones you recognise. They set the order of the project.
- Equivalents live in people’s heads
- Variants are quoted from catalogues, not from stock
- Calibration certificates are tied to nothing
- Cable and connector builds are one-off jobs
- Returned sensors lose their batch history
Prefer to talk it through? See the industrial sensor suppliers page.