Inventory Management

I'm working at the sawmill this summer. Fun, right?

WARNING: This isn't all technical and stuff. It's an abstract of a program I'd love to make.

There is one very good thing about it though (besides being paid). I get to see industry at work. One thing I've noticed is how their inventory system works.
A rather brief overview is this: after the tree is sawed into logs and then into boards (and sometimes ran through a molder or some other sort of machine), it is stacked into a "bundle." This bundle can be anywhere from a couple of boards to a couple hundred boards. They can be three inches wide to like sixteen (some are even bigger). Currently, the length and width of every board is put into a machine. This machine then uses a formula to calculate the board feet and linear feet found in the bundle of lumber.

The little machine has tons of great options. You've really got to commend the amount of knowledge that these people (Forestry Systems, Inc.) had to put into their machine. My only complaint is this:  the sawmill does not seem to have any sort of system for using the data the machine gets.

The bundles are assembled into a load, as specified by the salesman. My dad figures out how to make the loads from available-or soon to be available-bundles of lumber. Once the load is tallied it is printed out and dad takes it down the the main office. The truck is loaded with the lumber and a invoice is generated based off of the printout of the lumber. This works, but I can definitely see room for improvement.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• The system would work a WHOLE lot better if the office could see everything that has been tallied. 
• There are lots of bundles of lumber that get tallied then not put onto a load. There are also tons of lumber that HASN'T been tallied that just sits around waiting to be tallied. If all of these could be tallied and put into a running inventory that the office (particularly the salesman) could see, then it seems that everything would run a bit smoother.
• There would need to be some sort of way of keeping track of where the lumber was stored. This would be tricky because the lumber is moved a LOT. The lift drivers have to move some bundles to get to others. Keeping track of every little move would get really old really quick.
• Having a few different "statuses" for the lumber. Let's say that a bundle is tallied. It's status could be "Ready to Ship." But then dad decides he needs it to get dressed. When the forklift driver gets it and brings it to the place that dresses (pretty much just smooths out) the lumber, the bundle number could be entered at that place. The status would then be changed to "Being Dressed." Once it was finished and back in stock, it would again be "Ready to Ship." The inventory would reflect that this bunk was now "Dressed" instead of "Rough."
• Having this feature would eliminate the problem of dad having to run around all day trying to figure out where lumber was.
• Other stuff. As you can see, this is a rather large category. I don't really know what all I want it to do exactly. I'll have to do more research. The main idea behind it all is that the lumber is tracked better and this tracking translates into people being able to see where the lumber is and what it's doing at all times. 

I'm going to start trying to watch and take notes on what a complete inventory system would do. There is obviously a ton of code that would need to be done for this. Not the mention the necessity of a GUI.

List of things I'd need to even start:
1) Knowledge of how to make a database. I'm thinking it wouldn't need to be bigger than 1000 entries for dad's sawmill, and it's the biggest in the Eastern US. I don't think anywhere would need more than that.
2) More information. I'll have to wait and see what they actually use and what they really don't.
3) Time. Duh.

Anyway, those are just my thoughts. If you've got any suggestions and such, please let me know!