Practical perspectives on supply chains, smarter operations, and building a business that’s ready for what’s next.
Inventory turnover is the metric most likely to be quoted with confidence and understood poorly. Someone finds an industry average,…
Read article : Inventory Turnover Ratio: Benchmarks by Manufacturing Segment
Materials with a shelf life break the ordinary logic of inventory management. Normal stock has a carrying cost. Perishable stock…
Read article : Shelf Life and Batch Expiry: Managing Perishable Raw Materials
Reorder points have a particular way of going wrong. Someone calculates them carefully at implementation, they’re correct for perhaps six…
Read article : How AI Sets Reorder Points That Adapt to Real Demand
Operating several stock locations creates a problem that single-site manufacturers never face: you can have plenty of an item and…
Read article : Multi-Warehouse Inventory: Balancing Stock Across Locations
Ask what it costs to hold inventory and the usual answer references warehousing and the interest on the money tied…
Read article : The True Cost of Carrying Inventory (It’s More Than You Think)
The annual stocktake is one of those practices that survives more on tradition than merit. It shuts the plant, consumes…
Read article : Cycle Counting vs. Annual Stocktake: Making the Switch
Most manufacturers segment inventory by value — the familiar ABC split, where a small proportion of items accounts for most…
Read article : ABC-XYZ Analysis: Prioritizing What Actually Matters in Your Warehouse
Dead stock is unusual among operational problems in that everybody knows it exists and almost nobody wants to be the…
Read article : Dead Stock: How to Find It, Move It, and Stop Creating It
The argument tends to be conducted in principle, which is why it never resolves. Procurement points to volume leverage and…
Read article : Single vs. Dual Sourcing: A Risk-Based Decision Framework
Traceability tends to get built for auditors and then discovered to be operationally valuable the first time something goes wrong.…
Read article : Raw Material Traceability: From Supplier Batch to Finished Good