Good inventory management enables companies to improve customer service, cash flow and profitability. ‘Best Practices in Inventory Management’ outlines the basic techniques, how and where to apply them, and provides advice to ensure they work to produce the desired effect in practice.
On completion of this course, you should be able to:
- Understand how inventory management techniques can be used in various situations, particularly in stores where the inventory can be anything from fast-moving products to slow-moving spares.
- Define and discuss distribution warehousing and manufacturers’ operations.
- Explore the inventory control aspects included in the DPIM, COM, DLM, CPIM courses and other professional and academic qualifications.
- Develop their understanding of stock control by seeing the techniques explained logically.
- Learn how inventory structuring, individual item control, forecasting and coordination provide the base for logistics management.
Course Outline
The basis of inventory control
- The role of inventory management
- Objectives for inventory control
- Profit through inventory management
- Reasons for the current stock
Customer service
- Meeting customer requirements
- Measuring availability
- Demand management
Managing the inventory
- Using Pareto analysis for control
- Stock cover
- Practical methods for reducing stockholding
- The approach – how to minimise stocks successfully
Just-in-time management
- The zero inventory philosophy
- JIT environment
- Advantages of JIT
- Stock control using JIT
Organisation and management
- Where stock control fits into the organisation
- Responsibilities
- And targets
- Inventory valuation
- Skills and systems
Safety stocks
- Learning from history
- Normal demand patterns
- Evaluation of safety stocks
Setting the correct stock levels
- A simple assessment of review levels
- Managing lead times
- Target stock levels
The changing role of purchasing
- Modern supply practice
- Supply partnerships
- The ordering process
- Order quantities
- Purchasing processes
Forecasting demand
- Options for assessing demand
- Causes of forecasting techniques
- Methods of Improving Forecasts
Historical forecasting techniques
- Basic forecasting techniques
- Weighted averages
- Choosing the best forecast
- Monitoring forecasts
Advanced forecasting methods
- More forecasting tools
- Forecasting for seasonal sales
- Other methods
Material requirements planning – an alternative to forecasting
- Avoiding uncertainty
- Material requirements planning
- Master planning
- Batch sizes
The future – inventory and logistics
- The basis of the lean supply chain
- Logistics
- Review
