Inventory is important to the supply chain, yet it is not universally well understood. It is considered as an economic asset to a non-income-producing use of capital funds. It is characterized, both positively and negatively in the aforesaid sentence. Only when considered in light of all quality, client service and economic factors—from the viewpoints of purchasing, manufacturing, sales and finance—does the whole picture of inventory become clear. Effective inventory management is essential to supply chain competitiveness. Inventory refers to a list of goods and materials, or those goods and materials themselves, held available in stock by any business. Inventory are held in order to manage and hide from the customer the fact that manufacture/supply delay is longer than delivery delay, and also to ease the effect of imperfections in the manufacturing process that lower production efficiencies if production capacity stands idle for lack of materials. In simpler words, inventory means store of goods that is held for some purpose or use. Inventory maybe kept “in house,” meaning in the premises or nearby for immediate use; or it may be held in a distant warehouse to be used in the future. Firms that utilize just-in-time methods, more often than not, the term “inventory” implies a stored quantity of goods that exceeds what is required by the firm to operate at the current time. (E.g., within the next few hours) Every business organization considers inventory as the asset that provides sustained competitive advantage in the business environment. Changes in the business environment have led to increased importance of managing inventory. The changes that have brought great concern in the business environment includes an increase in glob... ... middle of paper ... ...s with the maintenance of equipment. The definition of inventory management is “Inventory Management is a discipline that encompasses the principles, concepts and techniques for determining what to order, when to order and how much to order. The right amount of inventory involves the balance between what is required to service your customers and what is financially practical.” Features of Inventory Management: Extended Pricing: Improve customer satisfaction and beat the competition by generating flexible pricing options and rules for each customer. With extended pricing one can: ==> Create standard price schemes as well as personalized pricing options. ==> Implement powerful date-sensitive functionality for sales and promotions. ==> Navigate the system using drill-down and other capabilities that offer a fast learning curve visibility into your pricing index. .
Pricing Strategy: We are going to take into consideration inflation, benchmarking and customer trade off. The pricing strategy for the new products/line extensions will be a penetration-pricing strategy to gain customers from other competitors and increase market share. Further, the volume discounts are going to be in the range of 25-40%. Taking into consideration Product lifecycle, those will be raised in the time where new products/line extension are launched.
A, has recently made business decisions that appear to be attempts to protect the company by minimizing losses. Closing two stores in high crime areas, and declining to donate day old products to local food banks due to the possibility of fraud and concerns of employee theft may initially help Company Q’s bottom line, the passive attitude toward social responsibility will have a much greater negative impact on the company in the long run.
the retail industry is highly competitive which means a product could pass from highly seek to a “dust collector” in a matter of a few months. This makes valuating inventory very hard. Deloitte asserted this statement by strictly defining what was to be considered obsolete inventory and setting a wide amount range for what was to be considered obsolete. However, Just for Feet’s estimate was around 63% lower than Deloitte’s lower range. Deloitte did not thoroughly check such a discrepancy even after noticing category #3 for obsolete items was totally ignored a WHOLE warehouse was omitted from inventory count.
Inventory accounting is exceedingly important to a firm because inventories are a significant asset to the firm both in absolute size and proportion to all of the firm’s other assets. Furthermore, selling inventories more than its cost price represents the main source of a firm’s sustainable income. For a typical wholesaler or retailer there is only one inventory account called the Merchandise Inventory. For a manufacturing company there are three categories of inventory accounts which are Raw materials inventory, Work-in-process inventory and Finished goods inventory (Revsine, Collins, Johnson, Mittelstaedt & Soffer, 2015).
The costs of services are not cheap, and buyers are willing to search for the most favourable combination of price and acceptable service.
The just-in-time (JIT) inventory system was developed in Japan after World War II, in an effort to control costs during fiscally challenging economic times (Waguespack and Cantor, 1996). The challenge that faced many Japanese companies in the post-War era was to find a way to meet the needs of customers and businesses while utilizing as few resources and as little capital as possible. The Japanese developed these set of techniques in order to control production, limit unnecessary products and reinvest the valuable capital left from the savings back into the business structure (Waguespack and Cantor, 1996). Much of the success of many Japanese corporations over the past four or five decades has been was linked to the principles of JIT (Chhikara and Weiss, 1995).
... inventory turnover was found to be very low. The low inventory turnover ratio was an indicator of inadequacy, since inventory usually has a rate of return of zero (Inventory Turnover Ratio Interpretation, 2009). It also implied either poor sales or excess inventory. A low turnover rate indicated poor liquidity, convincible overstocking, and obsolescence, but it would have also reflected a planned inventory build-up in the case of material shortages or in anticipation of rapidly rising prices. (Inventory Turnover Ratio Interpretation, 2009) And a rapid and unexplained rise in the number of sales per day in receivables in addition to growing inventories to cover the shortage was noted. The interviewee (Public Accountant) could smell something suspicious which led him for more detailed procedures and proactive investigation at the end of which a fraud was detected.
My company is always searching for methods that will help companies become more efficient. Recently, I had the privilege of attending a Microsoft conference that introduced Nike’s Chairman, President and CEO, Mark Parker as the guest speaker. Apparently, due to, demand fluctuations and stiff competition, Nike now has an abundance of excess inventory. Upon hearing this startling revelation, I immediately thought about the Adapting Supply Chains to Tough Times, case study I read the other day. However, the problem that I discovered with Nike is that it has multiple locations, that all have different inventory needs. For instance, the Air Jordan X Retro “OVO” might sell well on the west coast, but not as well in the east. Therefore, my dilemma was to incorporate components of inventory management that would fit every location. Obviously, I had already begun
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 14.87 billion in 2007. Jeff Bezos’s intention was to create an internet based company with the most dedicated product portfolio on the internet where customers could find anything they might want. Amazon’s success is based on technology, services and products (Jens et al., 2003).
The furniture company Somerset needs to retain its customer service record and remedy any of its global supply chain issues before it has an adverse effect on the brand and start losing customers. With a frequent change in the product catalog, keeping an excessive inventory will cut its profit and some of the product may become obsolete even before the furniture hits the retail outlet stores. In order to achieve profit and success, business employee many strategies and the supply chain strategy are one of the operational management techniques that use analytical decision making process to achieve the company goals and provide tools to effectively compete in the market (Taylor and Russell, 2014).
I believe in some industries inventories will not be needed in the future, such as in the music industry and also the film industry, with the likes of Netflix and Hulu Plus coming in to dominance. In there area I believe there influence is only going to continue to grow. However, Inventory is hugely important in nearly all other business. For the like of manufactures whom need raw material inventory to create and assemble their products, in which retailers and distributors then purchase as inventory to sell on. Inventories are important for sales, as the company wants the product on hand to sell when it is in demand. Not having it on hand could lead to a loss of a sale and may not only just a lose a sale but this may lead to losing a reoccurring
1. Improved supply chain visibility provides present information about location and status of inventory and resources. The information concerning these available resources can also be calculated. However, this isn’t any easy job. Supply chain visibility requires remarkable supervision to take care of emphasizing the need for resources to prevent potential issues. If there is limited visibility when it comes to in-transit inventory and their ETA, it can result in ambiguity regarding product availability.
Sethi, S, Yan, H, & Zhang, H. (2005) Inventory And Supply Chain Management With Forecast Updates New York, NY : Springer.
In addition, at the time, the economy was doing great, therefore, using the push system to stock pile inventory was acceptable. However, during the dot-com bust of the 2000’s, its sales and the demand for its products greatly decreased. Unfortunately, during this time, Cisco discovered that it possessed an abundance of inventory, and, wrote off more than $1 billion in inventory. Consequently, the company learned that acquiring inventory in anticipation of market demand, and not factoring in the human element of its business increased its risks of failure. Obviously, Cisco wanted to meet its customer’s demands, however, the problem was that it held more inventory than what the customers were demanding. Nevertheless, afterwards, it knew that it needed to adopt a new, more efficient approach to inventory. Therefore, Cisco had to reevaluate its supply chain system and seek input from IT, customers, suppliers, and finance. Further, by including input from these sources, Cisco adopted the more efficient pull system. The pull system, is dependent upon producing smaller repeating orders. Rather than the push system, which relies on larger less repeating orders. Effective inventory management, when administered correctly, can reduce and keep the inventory to a more desired level. In addition, Cisco discovered that inventory management can reduce inventory levels, enhance cash flow and reduce overall
Inventory management is a method through which a business handles tangible resources and materials to ensure availability of resources for use. It is a collection of interdisciplinary processes including a full circle of the demand forecasting, supply chain management, inventory control and reverse logistics. Inventory management is the optimization of inventories of manufactured goods, work in progress, and raw materials. According to Doucette (2001) inventory management can be challenging at times; however, the need for effective inventory management is largely seen more as a necessity than a mere trend when customer satisfaction and service have become a prime reason for a business to stand apart from its competition. For example, Wal-Mart’s inventory management is one of the biggest contributors to the success of the company; effective and efficient inventory management is of critical importance.