Makes Supply Chains Lightning Fast
Supply Chain Management / Supply Chain Consulting
CASE STUDY Best Practices in Inventory Management
K. Ravichandran Debjyoti Paul
A leading consumer products company dealing in cosmetics and other personal care products was seeking ways to: Reduce inventory levels across their forward supply chain Improve Inventory Record Accuracy at their storage points Accurately track damaged goods at various points in the supply chain The above problems together were a significant burden to the company. Implementation of best practices after a detailed business analysis resulted in the following benefits: Inventory Record Accuracy improved to 95% within 2 months Stock levels reduced by about 30% across
…show more content…
The process of setting safety stocks at depots was made periodic and dynamic, based on updated sales data. 5. Norms were set to act on damaged / old and other dead stocks. Clear
action steps were laid down to liquidate or destroy these stocks. Responsibility and accountability were set to in the organisation to monitor and authorise activities in this regard based on visibility provided by the IT solution.
Email: debjyoti_paul@sifycorp.com / k_ravichandran@sifycorp.com
Sify Ltd, India
Makes Supply Chains Lightning Fast
Benefits: 1. The organisation achieved an inventory record accuracy (book stocks correctly reflecting physical stocks) of 95% within 2 months . 2. The company achieved (Within 2 Planning cycles i.e. 2 Months) a. Stock level reduction From 8.2 weeks to 5.5 weeks at the BSR From 6.5 weeks to 4 weeks at the depots which included Damaged Inventory Reduction in stock Value holding across the supply chain b. Transparency of saleable and damaged stocks quantities across the supply chain resulting in more accurate demand planning, stock allocation and production. c. Better management of damaged and un-saleable stocks: Sales realisation on salvaging and selling damaged stocks at a discounted price Timely destruction of unusable and potentially harmful products Timely action on transport, handling, stock management and product development fronts to reduce damages d. Reduction in proportion of old and damaged stocks;
4 Improved stock turns: If they is less stock pile in the form of inventory of finished goods, it will automatically help in reducing the cash tied up with that stock. It ensures fewer borrowing from the bank of other financial institutions. With the availabiliy of cash, more money can be spent on producing essential goods.
In addition increases the costs due to out of date and damage lots of inventory, which are also leading to high shrinkage level for the retailer. It is possible to overcome these barriers and enhance the company’s reputation, increase customer satisfactions including high level of profitability by practising good inventory management system in place (Warren, Reeve, & Duchac, 2013).
Abstract —There are some complex and compelling challenges that global manufacturing industries should face, which includes price fluctuation, supply-chain inefficiencies and increasing customer expectations. In order to meet the demand of this economic environment, manufacturers need to find innovative, smarter ways to face those challenges. Thus, the efficient inventory management becomes urgent to manufacturers and it could help improve profitability and increase customer satisfaction. This paper aims to talk about what inventory management is and its importance, what problems inventory management might have and how to improve inventory management efficiency.
Assuming weekly periodic review replenishment, a Lead time equal to four and a half weeks and a policy of satisfying 98 percent of customers demand from items in stock the safety stock would be:
In this final paper for Managerial Finance I will attempt to show how the supply chain inventory management method can be affected depending on the situation of the retailer. Studying the control method for problems in inventory, which would include both, excesses in inventory as well as shortages, and hoping to minimize loss.
“In an age of increasing specialization, it is rare for one person to be knowledgeable in all aspects of a complex task” (Thompson, 2015, p. 88). In this case, the first step was to understand our incoming demand. For this, I relied on information technology to generate numerous reports as well as the expertise of our sales team. It was at that point that the data was analyzed in conjunction with an inventory specialist. After we had the knowledge of what current product to inventory, we then needed to establish a set of guidelines of how to qualify products in the future. Inventory control management processes were instituted as well as a supply an auditing system. These steps included information from organizational members from our manufacturing group, planning department, and procurement department. Finally, we needed to understand and facilitate the storage and shipping of the product. We enlisted the help of our warehouse employees as well as our transportation department. This type of project included various levels of the organization and required a tremendous amount of communication. The project workload was enormous and also had a substantial financial investment associated with it. Instrumental in the project’s success was the team’s cohesion, diversity, and strategies deployed
Office Depot uses multiple inventory strategies to order products. 90% to 95% of goods are ordered through automatic replenishment, manual replenishment, pull replenishment, and global sourcing are also used depending on channel, volume, velocity and cost. (Office Depot, 2015). The accuracy of the inventory from both a DC and store perspective is critical to the organizations success. Heizer and Render (2014) state that record accuracy is a prerequisite to inventory management, production scheduling, and sales. Accuracy is maintained by either periodic or perpetual systems (p.479). In Office Depot, the stores are required to cycle-count technology items such as laptops, desktops computers, and tablets five days a week. Discrepancies are entered in the system and bounced off the local DC’s on-hand inventory discrepancies. Office Depot is a “blind receive” organization meaning the stores receive pallets of products and simply unwrap and put them away. The only way a store knows if a product is missing is through the cycle-count program. This system was put into place to speed up the receiving process and eliminate unnecessary steps once the product was received at the store level. Office Depot conducts a full physical inventory once a year through a third party and trues up the inventory shrink at this time.
As three of America's leading retailers, Home Depot, Nordstrom, and Cold Water Creek, are responsible for over $80 billion in annual sales. Retail industry analysts look for commonalities in inventory management reporting in order to track company's ability to move inventory and maximize pricing strategies and avoid having to discount obsolescent inventory thus affecting profit. Through analysis of a company's inventory management ratio, outside investors and inside management can track the number of times each year a company turns its inventory. Industries such as retail are extremely sensitive to inventory management as many retail products have short shelf lives due to cyclical inventory and technological advances.
The company that our group has partnered with for this project is CVS Pharmacies. We looked into this company to see if there were any areas for improvement within the organization that would have an impact on external customers. Within this define stage is when we did exactly that, we defined the problem. One problem that we found within the CVS Pharmacy, that would be easy enough to handle given the scope of the project, concerned the stores current inventory (overstock, backstock) system. It seemed that currently there was no formalized process with regard to placing items in overstock, resulting in an unorganized and unconventional overstock area. This created a problem because it made it harder
St. Bonaventure University Inventory Management Nordstrom Christian Artuso Research Paper November 17, 2017 Abstract This paper looks to go in-depth looking at inventory management as a whole, how it works and how it can benefit a company. Due to their seemingly revolutionary change in recent years, Nordstrom will be the example used to examine the importance of proper inventory management. After probing the history and gaining an understanding of the company, this research paper will be able to compare and contrast Nordstrom to its competitors in the retail industry and discuss how the way that the company deals with inventory makes it able to compete and survive.
Second, the classification in inventory management is still inaccurate. That results in some problems such as: the severe lack of some products which are in growing demand (1 inch valve series 230), the redundancy making storage expenses go up and the stagnancy in storage area (to products like gear driven rotary and monitor controller)
In this case study, production and operations management (POM) issues of a mid-size company, named as Scientific Glass Inc., in a highly growing market are studied. Using the background information on past actions of the company to correct inventory management and their results, and considering the market leadership opportunity, how inventory management approach can be made better is explained by evaluating different alternatives from different aspects. In the first part, critical POM issues are mentioned, following that these problems are analyzed. In the third part, alternative options are listed and then they are evaluated. Finally, considering
Piggy Poopy apply the Safety stock to ensure that the raw material will not be running off because sometimes supply and demand of the customers will not goes to the same way. So, the company keeps the raw material for 10000 units produced to prevent the shortage. Moreover, we stock the raw material because sometimes there is shortage of raw material and it affected the price increasing. It causes the cost per unit increasing so we will get low profit and sometimes we increase price of our product. Moreover, the customer will buy less because price is increasing but quantity is the same. For this reason we should have a safety stock to prevent chaos that would
The complexity of the product line and the wide variety of the brands’ needs and priorities make it difficult for Vanity fair to run its supply chain. It is a challenge for Vanity Fair to keep up with the continuously changing product designs. Rapid replenishment is also a challenge. Major retailers required Vanity fair to replenish inventories within 8 days so they can minimize inventory costs. In this area, Vanity Fair competes with Zara, which is known for fast replenishment of inventory throughout a season. Therefore, Vanity Fair needs a responsive and flexible supply chain.
A common way of decreasing the amount of inventory a business holds on a daily basis is implementing a just-in-time inventory process. A Just-In-Time inventory system means that the business gets the materials for a product, as they are demanded. “The electronic data