Project Report on Inventory Management

The shop only carries stock that it requires – it does not store surplus stock in a warehouse. This means that it must buy often but also that it does not tie up any money in holding stock, or paying for warehouse premises or warehouse staff.

Evaluate the role their inventory plays in the company’s performance, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

To be successful in today’s business environment, an organization must be able to perform certain fundamentals accurately and efficiently. One of these elements is having an effective and efficient Inventory System Management (ISM). ISM enables one to have the knowledge of where his or her inventory is at every step of the way. This allows one to better interact with consumer and make sales. Choosing the right ISM can lead and pave the ground work for future business success and profitability.

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.

There are various reasons for holding inventory. Inventory acts as a buffer between supply and demand fluctuations and irons out supply chain system failures. The smoother your supply chain operates and the better you are able to forecast the less inventory you have to hold, unless you gain some economies of scale in purchasing, transportation and or manufacturing. Especially for supermarket, holding inventory can lead to customer satisfaction and increase their loyalty. Customers tend to stop by most often at supermarket where they surely know the item is available.

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.

The inventory and production departments also have issues. Currently, inventory is done by the receiving area supervisor confirming the shipping documents against incoming orders by hand. This allows for human error and is not a quick or efficient way to do inventory. The same process is used when production takes items from inventory. The inventory system is only updated once daily when new raw materials arrive and then again once daily from production when the raw material is used. The lack of tracking and checking in a timely manner leaves the organization’s processes at a higher risk of failure. The inventory system does not currently communicate with the sales or with the Finance and Accounting applications. This may lead to a

The company should always try to maintain sufficient levels of the inventory in order to operate the business successfully. The company cannot afford to have stock outs or the overstock. As some of the inventory is brought from outside the United States, due to which they have to have that inventory in the stock. Some of those outside country vendors require long prior notice for the requirements in order to be able to supply that accordingly.

Nowadays, in an era that has advanced technology and a place in the world. Everything can be linked only at your fingertips in the times of rapidly developing with the sophisticated technology of today. Therefore, an inventory system is also not lagging behind in introducing a method of keeping an inventory data systematically and safely. The system plays a very important role in improving the competitiveness of a business. Usually, organizations today face too many challenges to achieve the cost, speed and reliability. Efficient inventory system really help in order to make sure the store’s performance and data record is always in good condition and secured from abusers. The system basically to ease the admin to manage the

Inventory management has two very different, but effective methods: Vendor managed inventory, and consignment inventory. A company may choose to utilize either of these two methods to manage inventory. If a company is able to manage inventory, they will be better able to work the company's capital to the fullest extent. The following paper will identify the differences between the two as well as identify what type of company is best suited for each method.

The inventory management is very key to a company. The reason for this is because when your

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

Axsäter, 2006). In this area only large scale multi-national companies have set a number of

SF does not want the product overproduced, provide timely reporting of product sales in order to avoid this problem. For this reason, the company's inventory becomes a serious problem.

The finance department will also monitor levels of lost and outdated inventory to make sure that the levels don’t become too high. They need to write off this inventory but has to make sure that it isn’t excessive. Finance people also monitor the counts or physical inventories in order to reconcile what is actually on hand with what has been recorded in the company’s records. The finance department does not manage the inventory personally but it does have to make sure that the people