Enhancing Supply and Inventory Operations through a Material Resource Information System (MRIS) at Holy Trinity College of General Santos City

Abstract

Educational Institutions depend on the Supply Management Offices (SMOs) to manage their procurement and use of supplies, facilities, and equipment. Within Holy Trinity College, manual processes for dealing with requests, procurement and stock management were in place, resulting in inefficiencies, inaccuracies and delays in reporting. To address these challenges, this study designed and developed a Material Resource Information System (MRIS) using the CakePHP framework to automate supply management operations. The system was designed using a ‘Hybrid SDLC approach', which incorporates structured development methodology of the Waterfall approach with the adaptability of iterative development of the Agile approach thus providing a methodology that was both rigorous and adaptable to feedback from the users. Some great features were the automated request processing, the real-time tracking of inventory, and reporting. To assess the effectiveness of the system, user satisfaction, usability, functionality, and usefulness were considered, a survey was conducted among 10 respondents including the Property Custodian, the office staff, and randomly selected personnel from the HTC. The results revealed means of Very Good for usefulness (4.71), user satisfaction (4.55), functionality (4.68), and usability (4.43) respectively. Results show that MRIS has a specific ability to reduce inefficiency within supply management operations and boost decision-making quality and accuracy. Overall, the study has shown that the developed system is a practical and reliable solution for automating inventory and procurement processes in academic institutions, providing benefits in terms of increased transparency, accountability, and effectiveness.