We ran a 12 million dollar parts room with a DOS/bBase system that would all fit on a diskette. We tracked every box that came in and went out with a barcode on each box.
When I wrote it I had the fact that techs hate PCs in mind. I ran it side by side with the paper logging system and within a week they were all using the PC. One rule I had in the design is you never type in anything more than once. Every box was tracked by when we recieved it, everyone who handled it and when it was finally used and reordered. Most transactions were a couple keystrokes and a bar code swipe. "Lost" parts dropped to zero and the annual inventory went from a 2-3 day ordeal to a couple hours walking around with the bar code scanner.
DOS is POWER.
