Low-stock alerts for consumables (welding rod, filters, bits)
Consumables don't need PM — they need alerts before you run out. Here's how to set min-stock thresholds that fire early enough to reorder without panic.
The crew rolls up to a Monday-morning weld-out and there are six rods in the box. By 9:15 the welder is idle, the foreman is in line at the welding-supply counter, and the whole crew is on the clock waiting. That's a stop-work issue caused by a $90 reorder nobody made on Friday. Consumables don't need PM intervals; they need an alert that fires before you run out.
What counts as a consumable
If it gets used up and replaced rather than maintained and kept, it's a consumable. The line is fuzzy but the test is clean: do you ever schedule maintenance on it?If yes, it's a tool. If no, it's a consumable.
- Welding consumables. Rod (E7018, E6010), MIG wire, flux, contact tips, nozzles, gas (argon, CO2 mix).
- Filters. Oil filters and air filters by part number. One of the biggest stop-work risks because the part number matters and substitutes wrong-size.
- Cutting consumables. Drill bits, masonry bits, sawzall blades, cutoff wheels, sanding discs, grinding wheels.
- PPE. Gloves, safety glasses, ear plugs, dust masks, hard-hat liners.
- Rags, absorbent, oil-dry.Boring until the day there's a spill and none of it is in the truck.
Setting min-stock thresholds
The formula is two terms plus a safety margin:
min_stock = (lead_time_days × daily_usage) + safety_margin
Lead time is how long from order placed to on-the-shelf. The local welding supply might be same-day; the OEM-only oil filter from the dealer might be 4 days. Daily usageis what the crew actually burns through on a normal day (not the peak day). Pull this from the last 30 days of usage data if you have it, from gut if you don't.
Safety margin covers the bad day and the miscount. A round number that adds 1–2 days of usage works for most items. More for anything where running out actually stops work — welding rod, key filter sizes, the gloves nobody else will use.
Example: E7018 welding rod, 5 lb cans. Lead time 1 day (local supplier), daily usage 3 cans, safety margin 6 cans. Min-stock = (1 × 3) + 6 = 9 cans. Order at 9, get delivery at ~6, never hit zero.
Baseline thresholds for common items
Starting points. Adjust to your actual usage after a couple of months of data.
| Item | Unit | Lead time | Min-stock baseline |
|---|---|---|---|
| E7018 welding rod | 5 lb can | 1 day | 8–12 cans |
| Oil filter (track by P/N) | Each | 2–4 days | 3–6 per fleet unit served |
| 3/8" drill bit | Each | Same day | 6–10 |
| Cutoff wheel, 4.5" | Each | Same day | 20–30 |
| Sanding disc, 5" | Each | 1 day | 25–50 |
| Cut-resistant gloves (L) | Pair | 1–2 days | 12–20 pair |
Who gets alerted
Not the operator. The operator's job is to use the consumable, not to remember to order it. The alert goes to the shop manager or tool-crib manager — whoever has the authority to place the reorder and the budget code to charge it to.
The general rule: one human owns reorder for the crib, one alert channel they actually check. Email plus a dashboard tile is plenty. Slack works if your shop runs on it; SMS is only for the stop-work items (rod, filters for the in-service rebuild).
How DirtFleet's low-stock alert fires
Mark the item isConsumable: true and set a reorderThreshold. The on-hand count updates when someone scans a checkout, an adjustment, or a delivery. A cron job runs hourly and computes which items crossed below threshold since the last run.
On crossing, three things happen:
- The dashboard tile updates — “3 on hand of 10” turns red until the count climbs back.
- An email goes to the shop manager with the item, current count, and reorder threshold.
- A
tool.low_stockwebhook fires so a Zap can post to Slack or POST directly to the supplier's reorder endpoint.
Once the count climbs back above threshold (delivery received, count adjusted up), the tile clears and the next crossing fires a fresh alert. No daily nag emails — the alert is event-driven, not scheduled.
The closing playbook
- List your top 20 stop-work consumables. The ones that actually halt a crew if they run out.
- Set min-stock for each using the formula above. Round up; round numbers are easier to remember.
- Assign one human as the reorder owner. They get the alerts; they place the orders; they update the on-hand count on delivery.
- Check the tile at end of shift for the first two weeks. Tune thresholds that fire too often or too late.
- After 60 days, look at the items that did hit zero. Either the threshold was wrong or the reorder owner missed the alert. Fix the root cause, not the symptom.
Tool tracking and low-stock alerts are included in the standard plan — see tool tracking without bloat for the full module shape, or browse the live tools demo to see the crib view.