Design of a Digital Inventory Management System for Spare Parts Dealers in New Haven Market, Enugu

Small and medium-scale spare parts businesses in Nigerian markets frequently rely on manual stock records, leading to inventory discrepancies, overstocking, stockouts, and loss of revenue through poor tracking of sales and supplies. New Haven Market in Enugu, which hosts a dense concentration of automobile spare parts dealers, represents a context where digital inventory management could generate significant operational improvements. This study designed a digital inventory management system tailored to the scale and technical capacity of spare parts dealers operating in New Haven Market, Enugu. The system was developed using a PHP and MySQL web-based architecture with a simplified user interface designed for operators with limited formal computer training. Core functionalities included stock registration, sales recording, low-stock alerts, supplier management, and monthly inventory reporting. Interviews conducted with spare parts dealers in New Haven Market informed the system's feature set, ensuring alignment with actual business workflows. Prototype evaluation with selected dealers confirmed that the system reduced time spent on manual stock counting, provided instant visibility into product availability, and generated daily sales summaries previously unavailable in the manual system. Dealers reported particular value in the low-stock alert feature, which enabled proactive restocking ahead of supply shortfalls. The study concluded that an appropriately simplified digital inventory system can be effectively adopted by small-scale traders in Enugu's commercial markets, improving business efficiency without requiring advanced technical literacy.

Keywords: inventory management, spare parts, New Haven Market, Enugu, small business digitisation