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us inventory flow patterns. ? To appreciate the contemporary approaches to managing inventory. 93 Overview of Inventory Management ?Inventories are stocks of goods and materials that are maintained for many purposes, the most being to satisfy normal demand patterns. ?Inventory management is a key ponent of supplychain management, in part because inventory decision are often a start point, or driver, for other business activities such as warehousing, transportation, and materials handling. ?Different functional areas have different inventory objectives. ? Marketing tends to want to ensure that sufficient inventory is available for customer demand in order to avoid potential stockout situations ― higher inventory levels. ? Finance group generally seeks to minimize the costs associated with holding inventory ―lower inventory levels. ?One of the most prominent concerns about inventory is its cost, which is presented in greater detail later in this chapter. ? Finished goods inventories are much more expensive to hold than raw materials or work in process. ? The focus on inventory costs has intensified in recent years because of concern with inventory turnover. 97 ? Inventory turnover is the number of times that inventory is sold in a 1year period. ? Inventory turnover: cost of goods sold divided by average inventory at cost. cost of goods sold = inventory turnover average inventory $200,000 = inventory is sold 4 times per year. $ 50,000 ? Inventory turnover figures can provide important insights about an anization’s petitiveness and efficiency. 98 ?Compare with petitors or benchmarked panies. ?Low inventory turnover = high inventory carrying costs, little (or no) stockout costs. ?High inventory turnover = low inventory carrying costs, high stockout costs. ?It’s easy to say that anizations should strive for a proper balance of inventory。 Stockout costs. ?Inventory carrying (holding) costs including: ? Obsolescence ? Inventory shrinkage ? Storage costs and handling costs ? Taxes ? Interest charges ? Opportunity cost ?In general, inventory carrying costs are expressed in percentage terms, and this