Materials Management / 1

CHAPTER I

Materials Management

Introduction
Materials Management is simply the process by which an organization is supplied with the goods and services that it needs to achieve its objectives of buying, storage and movement of materials. Materials Management is related to planning, procuring, storing and providing the appropriate material of right quality, right quantity at right place in right time so as to co-ordinate and schedule the production activity in an integrative way for an industrial undertaking. Most industries buy materials, transport them in to the plant, change the materials in to parts, assemble parts in to finished products, sell and transport the product to the customer. All these activities of purchase of materials, flow of materials, manufacture them in to the product, supply and sell the product at the market requires various types of materials to manage and control their storage, flow and supply at various places. It is only possible by efficient materials management. The materials requirements planning, purchasing, inventory planning, storage, inventory control, materials supply, transportation and materials handling are the activities of materials management. They will be discussed in details in various chapters to follow. About 20-25 years ago, there was no cut-throat competition in the market to sell the various consumer items manufactured by different industrial undertakings and the availability of materials to manufacture these items was not scarce. Therefore, materials management was not thought to be so important and its separate identity in the organization was not felt. But today it has become an important management activity to streamline production. Actually before the production begins it is necessary to ensure availability of all the types of materials needed for production and its supply at the