Essential Warehousing, Stores Management and Stock Control

Course Outline

 Introduction to inventory management 
o Objectives of inventory planning and stock control
o Reasons to hold inventory
o Inventory information system considerations
o Inventory push vs. pull systems
o Identifying inventory costs
o Customer service in inventory management

 Description and classification of inventory
o Types of inventory
o The inventory ABC classification ranking model
o Uses of the ABC ranking
o Materials specifications and cataloguing

 Forecasting demand and lead time
o The inventory order cycle
o Dependent versus independent demand
o Factors affecting demand
o Factors impacting demand forecast accuracy
o Demand patterns
o Time series forecasting methods:
 Seasonal demand
 Moving average
 Exponential smoothing
o Measuring the accuracy of the forecast
o Setting lead time and methods to control it

 Inventory systems
o Elements of inventory holding and ordering costs
o The Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) model
o Dealing with quantity discounts
o Objectives of safety stocks
o Setting safety stocks
o Determining the Reorder Point (ROP)

 Counting and controlling inventory
o Importance of accurate inventory records
o Warehousing functions
o Causes of inaccurate inventory records
o Requirements for accurate inventory records
o Reporting record accuracy
o Periodic and cycle counting

 Reducing inventory investment
o The importance of JIT or pull theory in inventory management to reduce total cost
o Identification of surplus
o Disposal options of excess inventory
o JIT methods
o JIT requirements
o JIT risks

 Measuring inventory management performance
o Importance of tracking the effectiveness of the inventory planning and control functions
o Reasons behind poor inventory management performance
o Setting inventory KPIs and targets
o Examples of KPIs used in the inventory planning and control functions
o Qualities of the inventory specialist