Managing inventory requires executives to balance competing goals: high product availability versus low investment in inventory.
Beware of Simple Rules of Thumb for Managing Inventory
Recent Posts
The Role of Trust in the Demand Forecasting Proces…Trust is always a two-way street, but let’s stay on the demand forecaster’s side. What characteristics of and actions by forecasters and demand planners build trust in their work? Key to building trust among the users of forecasts are perceptions of forecaster and demand planner competence and objectivity. […]
Service-Level-Driven Planning for Service Parts B…Service-Level-Driven Service Parts Planning is a four-step process that extends beyond simplified forecasting and rule-of-thumb safety stocks. It provides service parts planners with data-driven, risk-adjusted decision support. […]
Implementing Demand Planning and Inventory Optimiz…Data verification and validation are essential to the success of the implementation of software that performs statistical analysis of data, like Smart IP&O. This article describes the issue and serves as a practical guide to doing the job right, especially for the user of the new application. […]
Smart Posts
Why Days of Supply Targets Don’t Work when Computi…Blog, Inventory OptimizationCFOs tell us they need to spend less on inventory without impacting sales. One way to do that is to move away from using targeted day of supply rules to determine reorder points and safety stock buffers. Here is how a target days of supply/coverage approach works: […]
Supply Chain Math: Don’t Bring a Knife to a Gunfi…Blog, Excellence in Forecasting, Inventory Optimization, Operational AnalyticsMath and the supply chain go hand and hand. As supply chains grow, increasing complexity will drive companies to look for ways to manage large-scale decision-making. Math is a fact of life for anyone in inventory management and demand forecasting who is hoping to remain competitive in the modern world. Read our article to learn more. […]
Managing Inventory amid Regime ChangeInventory OptimizationIf you hear the phrase “regime change” on the news, you immediately think of some fraught geopolitical event. Statisticians use the phrase differently, in a way that has high relevance for demand planning and inventory optimization. This blog is about “regime change” in the statistical sense, meaning a major change in the character of the demand for an inventory item. […]