We are often asked what the difference is between these two important performance metrics for inventory planning. While they are both important for measuring how successful a business is in meeting demand, their meaning is very different. If not understood and incorporated into the strategic inventory planning process, inventory will be inefficiently allocated resulting in lower customer service and higher carrying costs. We’ve illustrated the difference in this 4 minute recording using Microsoft Excel.
Smart Operational Analytics automatically calculates historical service levels & fill rates across any item. To see how you calculate these and other operational metrics including inventory turns, supplier performance, and more register below to watch a five minute demonstration. The demo will show how our cloud platform continuously calculates and reports these metrics across thousands of items helping you identify opportunities for service level improvement and inventory reduction.
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For too many companies, a critical piece of data fact-finding ― the measurement of demand uncertainty ― is handled by simple but inaccurate rules of thumb. For example, demand planners will often compute safety stock by a user-defined multiple of the forecast or historical average. Or they may configure their ERP to order more when on hand inventory gets to 2 x the average demand over the lead time for important items and 1.5 x for less important ones. This is a huge mistake with costly consequences.
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Recent Posts
Why Inventory Planning Shouldn’t Rely Exclusively on Simple Rules of ThumbFor too many companies, a critical piece of data fact-finding ― the measurement of demand uncertainty ― is handled by simple but inaccurate rules of thumb. For example, demand planners will often compute safety stock by a user-defined multiple of the forecast or historical average. Or they may configure their ERP to order more when on hand inventory gets to 2 x the average demand over the lead time for important items and 1.5 x for less important ones. This is a huge mistake with costly consequences. […]
Direct to the Brain of the Boss – Inventory Analytics and ReportingIn this blog, the spotlight is cast on the software that creates reports for management, the silent hero that translates the beauty of furious calculations into actionable reports. Watch as the calculations, intricately guided by planners utilizing our software, seamlessly converge into Smart Operational Analytics (SOA) reports, dividing five key areas: inventory analysis, inventory performance, inventory trending, supplier performance, and demand anomalies. […]
You Need to Team up with the AlgorithmsThis article is about the real power that comes from the collaboration between you and our software that happens at your fingertips. We often write about the software itself and what goes on “under the hood”. This time, the subject is how you should best team up with the software. […]
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