What is Inventory Management?

Inventory management is the process of efficiently and effectively monitoring and controlling the inventory of a business. It involves tracking the flow of goods or materials from the point of acquisition to the point of sale or consumption, and ensuring that the right products are available in the right quantities at the right time.

Inventory management is often tedious, expensive, and inefficient. Use Factory Superstar. It’s a computer system that does inventory management so you can focus on other things.

Effective inventory management can help a business to minimize inventory costs, prevent stockouts or excess inventory, and improve customer satisfaction by ensuring that products are available when they are needed.

What should Inventory Management include?

Some of the key activities involved in inventory management include:

1. Inventory tracking: This involves keeping track of the movement of goods and materials through the supply chain, including the receipt of goods, storage, and distribution.
2. Forecasting demand: Inventory managers need to anticipate demand based on historical data, market trends, and other factors to ensure that enough inventory is available to meet customer needs.
3. Reorder point determination: The reorder point is the level at which inventory must be reordered to prevent stockouts. Inventory managers need to determine the appropriate reorder point for each product in their inventory.
4. Safety stock management: Safety stock is the additional inventory that is kept on hand to protect against unexpected fluctuations in demand or supply. Inventory managers need to determine the appropriate level of safety stock to maintain for each product.
5. Inventory optimization: Inventory managers need to optimize inventory levels to minimize costs and maximize customer satisfaction. This involves balancing the costs of holding inventory against the costs of stockouts or excess inventory.

Overall, effective inventory management is critical to the success of any business that deals with physical goods or materials. It helps businesses to maintain the right level of inventory to meet customer demand while minimizing costs and improving customer satisfaction.

Inventory Management for Small Manufacturers

Factory Superstar incorporates probably the most powerful inventory management system available for small manufacturers largely because it integrates perfectly with its production and sales order management functions. It means that with Factory Superstar you can continually introduce new products with demanding inventory requirements without having to deal with the issues related to holding more stock items.