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Importance Of Inventory Management

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Inventory is a quantity of goods owned and stored by a business that is intended either for resale or as raw materials and components used in producing goods that the business sells. For example, motherboards warehoused at a computer company to be used in the assembling of its computer systems are inventory. The products displayed for sale and stored in the backrooms of a department store are inventory as well. Inventory is the heart beat of any business and its management is a major interest of purchasing managers. Operations managers usually have an indecisive attitude towards inventories as it can be costly. Since for many companies inventory is the largest item in the current assets category, inventory problems can and do contribute to …show more content…
No business can operate without inventories. It needs inventory as a protection against uncertainty, for efficient processing of material, and to permit transit and handling. For example a retailer can forecast the demand of a certain product over the lead time. This is buffer or safety inventory. It can also compensate for the uncertainties in the process of the supply of goods to the store. For example, hospitals have a supply of blood on stand by for immediate response to accidents and emergency patients. Moreover, physical inventory can counteract a lack of flexibility. This is also known as cycle inventory. Here, there is a wide range of customer options offered, stock is necessary unless the operation is perfectly flexible (cycle inventory). Batches of a certain size to match demand between times of delivery. So, even when demand is steady and predictable, there will always be some inventory to compensate for the intermittent supply. Physical inventory is also used to anticipate future demands. For example, the production of chocolate. It is produced a year ahead of demand and put into inventory until it is needed. However, if inventory isn't managed well, there can also be overstock that is too much of a product in store. Therefore, the longer the item is unsold in inventory, the greater the chance it will never sell at all. Thus the product will have to be written off or heavily discounted. Or sometimes thrown away, for example canned products in a supermarket, which can expire quickly. Which means loss of money to the company and excessive inventory has to be stored, counted and handled, which can add ongoing costs. Most operations managers try to reduce the overall level and costs of inventory and at the same time maintain customer

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