Chess & Stock Management!!!

With time, the inventory paradigm has changed. Strategies have shifted away from stifling "Traditional practices". Redundancies, errors and stock-outs have all had their impact weighed in on the business which demands a huge evolution. This is where Inventory optimizing and real time data analytics make way. Like what I've been hearing most often in business world, "“You want something that when the results come out, and with minimal human intervention, it can execute on those results. It may seek approval for a few items, but will work seamlessly with business systems on most recommendations.” You need to bring in that little bit in the business to deliver goals in these challenging times. 

Inventory and Stock Management are one of the primary concerns of any business world-wide and has always been an important driver of the business, let it be a "boom" situation or "recession" one. In the recession situation, it becomes more critical as we are in the mood of " cutting corners" trying to push that extra buck forward to ensure some decent bottom-line. 

Lots of research, system programs, algorithms have been written and re-written to ensure a perfect inventory control model. But still many of the problems exist because of  market conditions, design improvements, field failures, discontinuance of vendors, shortage of raw material so on and so forth. But the most important factor which is the "King" of all these reasons is "Historical Data". Our previous demand patterns, consumption trends, "back orders" information registered, etc., dictate our future inventory plans. 

Are we actually looking at the right "juke" box to tune our stocks and sales. Can a back order of yesterday repeat itself if stocked well? Can not a design improvement bring down consumption patterns? Will not the product life cycle change if the raw material is changed and/or a new model is launched? Will you stick with your model even if it doesn't sell? Will you like shouting "Oh, My God !!! How did this become obsolete ?. Really, this thing is getting out of hand" everyday?  Will you not like "built-in" systems to manage "Shelf Life" ? Will you not like to build-in data regarding credit checks decisions and what such "Sudden Shocker" Customers don't buy for short periods  in your systems? Will you not like Maximum Retail Price (MRP)  inspectors stop breathing down your neck with MRP violation cases by system controlled MRP syncronization in billing ? These are some of the thoughts. There are many more instances and can be very specific situations which can be related to the business trends eg., seasonal sales or purchases. 

The "Forward Inventory" model works out solutions for the above situations and many more. The explanations illustrated here are for "Replacement Parts Business" scenario. But the model can be applied to a manufacturing scenario too. This is a stand alone model & can be integrated with larger systems like SAP etc., if need be.

- DC

Courtesy: Mr.Mukund Srinivasan

http://www.scdigest.com/assets/reps/exec_brief_network_inventories.pdf