Inventory

[Smatticus]

Hello again everyone! Our second semester has just started at my high school and I'm back volunteering in the 'theatre' department. I want to tackle setting up an inventory for all or our lighting equipment and so forth and I was wondering if anyone out there had any good information about how best to go about doing this, right now I'm just looking at the lighting equipment but it may be more than that. Any tips or information would be helpful, what would be the best way to mark instruments?, etc, any thoughts, ideas? Thanks.

[wolf825]

Originally Posted by Smatticus

Hello again everyone! Our second semester has just started at my high school and I'm back volunteering in the 'theatre' department. I want to tackle setting up an inventory for all or our lighting equipment and so forth and I was wondering if anyone out there had any good information about how best to go about doing this, right now I'm just looking at the lighting equipment but it may be more than that. Any tips or information would be helpful, what would be the best way to mark instruments?, etc, any thoughts, ideas? Thanks.

Hiya,
Couple ways to do it that are popular... Depending on your inventory--Altman, Source 4 etc, extra barrels and lense tubes etc, color coding and stencil numbers work well. So do Paintpens to label or tag each instrument. For units that are set--like Altman 360's, I find color coding with Electrical tape in a band on the Yoke works well. 6x9's one color, 6x12's another color etc etc. Another thing you can do is to spray paint (cover those lenses) the frame holders on the lense tubes with a color for each degree--or paint a large stencil number on 3 sides of the tube--9, 12, or 16, or for S-4 it would be 19, 26 etc...or use a paintpen. Use white or reflective metallic or flourescent paints so you can identify from afar..like flourescent green for one, orange another, pink, silver etc etc... If your fixture sare set like the altmans--you can also paint a stencil number/color dot on the Yoke instead of the E-tape. Use high-temp paint tho..or it will wear away or chip off.
Another part of a good inventory is, aside from making a full active database list, is to mark the areas or storage locations clearly for specific units and accessories. Also list or mark each unit with its own TESTED ON date--before you put it back into service. Black Gaff and a silver sharpie work great for this...so you can change the tag out as you go and not permanently mark the unit. Just says that the unit was last tested, serviced and inspected on a certian date--like TEST OK 01/2/04 and an initial. If you have a large inventory, you could number each unit and keep record of such..like 6x9-101, 6x9-102, 6x16-101etc. In many production companys who stock hundreds of fixtures, a fixture will have its own bar-code for inventory and when a light comes down for a repair it will be logged as to the repairs, dates of service and any new or repaired equipment done and by whom etc...so if the plug is wired wrong or lamped wrong--you have someone to blame. While a barcode system is actually inexpnesive to set up and do, and equipment is cheap, unless you are in a controlled situation with users who know thw routine, its only wishful thinking and may not be practical for schools. But if you can, To take this further if you wanted to track your lamp use & life and so forth, aside from lamp inventory, you could corrolate your lamp use with specific instruments that are numbered or barcoded--giving you the ability to track a problem instrument that may need further inspection or service if it keeps going thru lamps like water, or to track lamp batches for problems. Also allows you to see when a fixture was last lamped..or nearing its end of lamp life expectancy. We do this with moving lights especially.

Cables--same thing--color code and specific locations and an active database. Lamp inventory, plugs, wiring and accessory inventory is easy--in labeled storage cabinets, shelves and boxes, labeled and counted and inventoried in a database. Stuff like barndoors, donuts and snoots (tophats) are marked with a paintpen. Additionally to keep inventory current--like we do for gel, when we take something out of inventory (like a sheet of gel) it is written down and signed out--and every month we collect the inventory sheets and adjust our inventory database for re-ordering and stocking. Then once a year we count everything and compare it to our logs and try to figure out where some stock may have gone to.

Hope this helps get ya started...
-wolf

[dvsDave]

If you have any source 4s, hold off on marking them... myself and the college's resident TD have an awesome system we are getting ready to show the world.

[dvsDave]

hey wolf,

what barcode system do you use?

[wolf825]

Originally Posted by dvsDave

hey wolf,

what barcode system do you use?

In the past I've used the barcode function in RPM by Arabesque...but currently we do not use a barcode at the center...yet...

-wolf

[ship]

Every year I have to inventory the store room/lock up. It takes two to five days on just tape, lamps and fog juice and easily adds up to over $100,000.oo per year once you add in the moving light lamps. This is simplified by my boss into categories such as resale or shop use by my boss and more general types of things stated for the accountants and people they hire to come in and verify things on the inventory. Gets to be really intimidating when their count says someting like 60 jugs of fog fluid and you can only point to 28 but than get told your boss mixed HQ, Stage and Cold Flow together for his list.

I do three seperate inventories every year. One for the boss that will be further simplified for the accountants, one for me in tracking what I use and buy - or what goes missing, and one for the vendors tracking how many of each I buy per year, keep on hand and how much I am currently paying. It's useful when you can E-Mail a vendor such a list and they say something like 800 HPL 575 lamps a year as well as others and what prices you are paying for them. This tends to drive prices down on them. From that I also know it's going to be a busy year because I have already bought half my expected purchases for them.

That's work where paying taxes on resale verses lamps and stuff for stock is important. I would think you don't need to get that much into detail.

For my old theater I used to use a designer's version of lamp tracking in that I did a fixture inventory with the details of the stock lamp for each, than all other lighting supplies in existance from how many barn doors in what size were in stock to the cable inventory according to grade and gauge. All of this helped guest designers come in and ahead of time expect and know what equipment he or she had.

In addition to that, for the designer inventory I also tracked gel and patterns. This is so hugely valuable on pro shows we have our own computer program just to track gel between cuts and full sheets. It does not quite warn when a shelf is empty but like with lamps, in time our inventory system will be that active. For the smaller theaters, just having a list that is updated even once a year helps when designing shows because you know how much of what color you have verses how much you have to buy without having to really go in and sort than count.

At work I also have a tracking system for expensive lamps by serial number on the lamp and other similar gear. What a pain in the rear to have to sign out lamps or check them into the system when new, but all you have to click on is "out" and you instantly know what shows have not returned their spare lamps yet or how many spares the moving light people are hanging onto for their own purposes.

Keeping a live inventory is very hard to do on the other hand so the once a year thing might be the easiest. I update the price quote part of the inventory daily in tracking prices to stuff, but I'm the only one with access to that program. It just takes a few moments but is helpful on subsequent orders much less like this morning when the system is down and I need to get 7 more Lycian M2 lamps by the morning. That said, unless you have time to accurately check in and out gear, it's not the best system even with sign out sheets.

I use post up sign out sheets in the store room for everything that leaves the room. Too difficult to check stuff back in much less keep with the purchases, but at least everything that leaves the room gets signed out. That way you can track which gear went out to which show plus who to contact. WE also use serial numbers that go into a huge equipment tracking program that again only limited people have access to. From it and the show request sheets, it's easy to track what show has which gear, than also given the inventory on HireTrack is right, how much gear is available for the next show. To do this on the more expensive and important things, they get serial numbers that get manually typed in and sent out assigned to the show. Barcodes would be nice and something we are looking into but so far won't work. Other places do use that.

In the end it's a question of tracking what goes out or comes back in a day to day way, than simple sign out sheets will help. Hmm, who took the last of the EHD lamps without telling me to buy more. Heads get to roll in those instances thus the use of tracking at least what goes out. Shows are automaticall checked back in by the computer.

Should you wish a copy of the inventory as I used to keep it I'll send it to you so you can understand but it's fairy old otherwise in being modern plus accurate.

[zac850]

I really have it easy. My school (currently, were getting more stuff...) has NOTHING. I am basically in charge of the lights, as the "head of the tech department" dose all of the sound stuff. It acutely works out well, i know lights and nothing about sound, he knows sound and nothing about lights...)
anyway, back to what i was saying.
my inventory consists of me looking into the crate where we keep all of our lighting stuff. That is 3 bulbs, a spare lens for our 12 fernels, and thats about it (i always know where are crappy american DJ board is, along with the 2 broken dimmers.)

however, somehow last year, or at the beginning of this year, we lost 1 of our fernels. We didn't notice it until trying to set up the 12 for the band concert, counted them, and then realized they were only 11. As it turns out, i found it AFTER the concert was over, sitting in the back storage room under a pice of stage... I have no idea who put it there, and the difference between 11 fernels and 12 fernels is a big difference....

anyway, my school is getting alot of cool stuff in 2 weeks, and once all of those decisions are finalized, i'll post about it....

[Smatticus]

Thanks for the information, I am about the only person interested or knowledgable in our lighting system at our high school so I don't have alot of support in keeping things organized and kept track of so it is kind of difficult to set up a very ornate system of inventory our equipment, but your suggestions are defnitely helpful. The majority of the equipment I will be inventorying is mostly lighting instruments, source fours, parnels, fresnels, and altman ellipsoidals... we don't really have any sound equipment because we don't have really have a sound system. :? Thanks again!

[Les]

hey zac, 'Fernel' is spelled Fresnel. The S is silent.lol.

[Les]

I can relate to organization right about now. Its coming close to the end of the 04 school year and I need to make sure next year's freshman (and soph's) will be able to have a handle on things. Since I am graduating, I want them to have something good to start out with next year. (I'm such a nice guy, lol)... I was a junior when I became TD at our 1500 seat auditorium with an inventory of 200+ lights. It was a new renovation and there was no system of organization in place. There were no areas hung or focused, and tech storage extended across the entire theatre department, and most of the battens. So my main goal as being TD/LD has been getting my life as a techie organized... Which is a constant battle as you all know... Since our space is state-of-the-art, we often have 'walk-thru's' where people from different dept's look at our facilities when they are considering a renovation or new construction.

Well anyway, what I have done this year so far is I have hung 15 areas (3 rows of 5, elect. 1,2,3, with 4 being the cyc lights) with 2 front lights each, one warm, one cool. Each area is set up using the 3-point theory (2 front lights, and one fresnel top light.) Each instrument is lamped and focused. On the electrics, there is one parcan between each pair of fresnels. (12 total) This is variable and will probably change through out the year, but I hope they don't change the area hang. There is also space for 3 specials from the catwalk, and there are two alcoves (boxbooms), each 3 channel, two-fer'd to 6 zoom ellipsoidals each. Lamped, and gelled in CMY. From our balcony, I have 3 channels on each side, with 3 zoom ellipsoidals on each side, lamped, and gelled in RGB. So that is what I have hanging. Aside from the 6 Iris CYC lights.

In our studio, I have 12 lekos, and 6 fresnels (lighting 6 areas) and two strips which are my own. We have a banquet coming up, so I will have to rehang for that, then I can take it all down and store it away until next year. When they come in, the studio grid will be clean, the tech storage will be organized (in progress) and the auditorium will be reset to a standard UIL hang, and every instrument will be properly hung, safety-cabled, and lamped (which has already been taken care of) The board will have the areas programmed into submaster page 1, and everything else (like colorwashes) on sub page 2. They will need to order lamps and gells soon, to get them through the fall show, which is our biggest of the year.

Well I hope they are ok without me next year, because right now I'm the only lighting guy, and also the only person willing to give up their social life and stay until 10 most every night, because our space is almost constantly in use... Especially around the holidays, and the end of the year. But they will have more to work with than what I had when I first came in there... Yeah, and both the booth and the dimmer rooms look great too. lol.