Inventory

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Electronics inventory

Inventory (British English) or stock (American English) is a quantity of the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.Template:Refn

Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the shape and placement of stocked goods. It is required at different locations within a facility or within many locations of a supply network to precede the regular and planned course of production and stock of materials.

The concept of inventory, stock or work in process (or work in progress) has been extended from manufacturing systems to service businesses and projects, by generalizing the definition to be "all work within the process of production—all work that is or has occurred prior to the completion of production". In the context of a manufacturing production system, inventory refers to all work that has occurred—raw materials, partially finished products, finished products prior to sale and departure from the manufacturing system. In the context of services, inventory refers to all work done prior to sale, including partially process information.

Business inventory

Reasons for keeping stock

There are five basic reasons for keeping an inventory:

1. Time: The time lags present in the supply chain, from supplier to user at every stage, requires that you maintain certain amounts of inventory to use in this lead time. However, in practice, inventory is to be maintained for consumption during 'variations in lead time'. Lead time itself can be addressed by ordering that many days in advance.
2. Seasonal demand: Demands varies periodically, but producers capacity is fixed. This can lead to stock accumulation, consider for example how goods consumed only in holidays can lead to accumulation of large stocks on the anticipation of future consumption.
3. Uncertainty: Inventories are maintained as buffers to meet uncertainties in demand, supply and movements of goods.
4. Economies of scale: Ideal condition of "one unit at a time at a place where a user needs it, when he needs it" principle tends to incur lots of costs in terms of logistics. So bulk buying, movement and storing brings in economies of scale, thus inventory.
5. Appreciation in value: In some situations, some stock gains the required value when it is kept for some time to allow it reach the desired standard for consumption, or for production. For example, beer in the brewing industry.

All these stock reasons can apply to any owner or product.

Special terms used in dealing with inventory management

• Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) SKUs are clear, internal identification numbers assigned to each of the products and their variants. SKUs can be any combination of letters and numbers chosen, just as long as the system is consistent and used for all the products in the inventory. An SKU code may also be referred to as product code, barcode, part number or MPN (Manufacturer's Part Number).
• "New old stock" (sometimes abbreviated NOS) is a term used in business to refer to merchandise being offered for sale that was manufactured long ago but that has never been used. Such merchandise may not be produced anymore, and the new old stock may represent the only market source of a particular item at the present time.

• ABC analysis (also known as Pareto analysis) is a method of classifying inventory items based on their contribution to total sales revenue. This can be used to prioritize inventory management efforts and ensure that businesses are focusing on the most important items.

Typology

1. Buffer/safety stock: Safety stock is the additional inventory that a company keeps on hand to mitigate the risk of stockouts or delays in supply chain. It is the extra stock that is kept in reserve above and beyond the regular inventory levels. The purpose of safety stock is to provide a buffer against fluctuations in demand or supply that could otherwise result in stockouts.
2. Reorder level: Reorder level refers to the point when a company place an order to re-fill the stocks. Reorder point depends on the inventory policy of a company. Some companies place orders when the inventory level is lower than a certain quantity. Some companies place orders periodically.
3. Cycle stock: Used in batch processes, cycle stock is the available inventory, excluding buffer stock.
4. De-coupling: Buffer stock held between the machines in a single process which serves as a buffer for the next one allowing smooth flow of work instead of waiting the previous or next machine in the same process.
5. Anticipation stock: Building up extra stock for periods of increased demand—e.g., ice cream for summer.
6. Pipeline stock: Goods still in transit or in the process of distribution; e.g., they have left the factory but not arrived at the customer yet. Often calculated as: Average Daily / Weekly usage quantity X Lead time in days + Safety stock.

Inventory examples

While accountants often discuss inventory in terms of goods for sale, organizations—manufacturers, service-providers and not-for-profits—also have inventories (fixtures, equipment, furniture, supplies, parts, etc.) that they do not intend to sell. Manufacturers', distributors', and wholesalers' inventory tends to cluster in warehouses. Retailers' inventory may exist in a warehouse or in a shop or store accessible to customers. Inventories not intended for sale to customers or to clients may be held in any premises an organization uses. Stock ties up cash and, if uncontrolled, it will be impossible to know the actual level of stocks and therefore difficult to keep the costs associated with holding too much or too little inventory under control.

While the reasons for holding stock were covered earlier, most manufacturing organizations usually divide their "goods for sale" inventory into:

• Raw materials: Materials and components scheduled for use in making a product.
• Work in process (WIP): Materials and components that have begun their transformation to finished goods. These are used in process of manufacture and as such these are neither raw material nor finished goods.
• Finished goods: Goods ready for sale to customers.
• Goods for resale: Returned goods that are salable.
• Stocks in transit: The materials which are not at the seller's location or buyers' location but in between are "stocks in transit". Or we could say, the stocks which left the seller's plant but have not reached the buyer, and are in transit.
• Consignment stocks: The inventories where goods are with the buyer, but the actual ownership of goods remains with the seller until the goods are sold. Though the goods were transported to the buyer, payment of goods is done once the goods are sold. Hence such stocks are known as consignment stocks.
• Maintenance supply: Materials and supplies to be consumed in the production process.

For example:

Manufacturing

A canned food manufacturer's materials inventory includes the ingredients to form the foods to be canned, empty cans and their lids (or coils of steel or aluminum for constructing those components), labels, and anything else (solder, glue, etc.) that will form part of a finished can. The firm's work in process includes those materials from the time of release to the work floor until they become complete and ready for sale to wholesale or retail customers. This may be vats of prepared food, filled cans not yet labeled or sub-assemblies of food components. It may also include finished cans that are not yet packaged into cartons or pallets. Its finished good inventory consists of all the filled and labeled cans of food in its warehouse that it has manufactured and wishes to sell to food distributors (wholesalers), to grocery stores (retailers), and even perhaps to consumers through arrangements like factory stores and outlet centers.

Capital projects

The partially completed work (or work in process) is a measure of inventory built during the work execution of a capital project, such as encountered in civilian infrastructure construction or oil and gas. Inventory may not only reflect physical items (such as materials, parts, partially-finished sub-assemblies) but also knowledge work-in-process (such as partially completed engineering designs of components and assemblies to be fabricated).

Defence inventory

Specific problems arise in the defence field regarding the maintenance of adequate stocks of supplies and spare parts to take account of unknown deployment requirements while avoiding risks of obsolescence. For example, the UK's Ministry of Defence acknowledged in 2013 that it faced "serious problems ... in the management of its inventory", holding more stocks than were required, failing to dispose of unneeded inventory, and wasting public money as a result, and around the same time, in March 2012, obsolescence within the Indian Army's air defence inventory was noted by Chief of the Army Staff General V. K. Singh in a letter to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Virtual inventory

A "virtual inventory" (also known as a "bank inventory") enables a group of users to share common parts, especially where their availability at short notice may be critical but they are unlikely to required by more than a few bank members at any one time. Virtual inventory also allows distributors and fulfilment houses to ship goods to retailers direct from stock, regardless of whether the stock is held in a retail store, stock room or warehouse. Virtual inventories allow participants to access a wider mix of products and to reduce the risks involved in carrying inventory for which expected demand does not materialise.

Costs associated with inventory

There are several costs associated with inventory:

• Ordering cost

• Setup cost

• Holding cost

• Shortage costs (the costs arising out of inability to supply, including lost revenue, reputational damage, and potential loss of customer loyalty).

Principle of inventory proportionality

Purpose

Inventory proportionality is the goal of demand-driven inventory management. The primary optimal outcome is to have the same number of days' (or hours', etc.) worth of inventory on hand across all products so that the time of runout of all products would be simultaneous. In such a case, there is no "excess inventory", that is, inventory that would be left over of another product when the first product runs out. Holding excess inventory is sub-optimal because the money spent to obtain and the cost of holding it could have been utilized better elsewhere, i.e. to the product that just ran out.

The secondary goal of inventory proportionality is inventory minimization. By integrating accurate demand forecasting with inventory management, rather than only looking at past averages, a much more accurate and optimal outcome is expected. Integrating demand forecasting into inventory management in this way also allows for the prediction of the "can fit" point when inventory storage is limited on a per-product basis.

Applications

The technique of inventory proportionality is most appropriate for inventories that remain unseen by the consumer, as opposed to "keep full" systems where a retail consumer would like to see full shelves of the product they are buying so as not to think they are buying something old, unwanted or stale; and differentiated from the "trigger point" systems where product is reordered when it hits a certain level; inventory proportionality is used effectively by just-in-time manufacturing processes and retail applications where the product is hidden from view.

One early example of inventory proportionality used in a retail application in the United States was for motor fuel. Motor fuel (e.g. gasoline) is generally stored in underground storage tanks. The motorists do not know whether they are buying gasoline off the top or bottom of the tank, nor need they care. Additionally, these storage tanks have a maximum capacity and cannot be overfilled. Finally, the product is expensive. Inventory proportionality is used to balance the inventories of the different grades of motor fuel, each stored in dedicated tanks, in proportion to the sales of each grade. Excess inventory is not seen or valued by the consumer, so it is simply cash "sunk into the ground". Inventory proportionality minimizes the amount of excess inventory carried in underground storage tanks. This application for motor fuel was first developed and implemented by Petrolsoft Corporation in 1990 for Chevron Products Company. Most major oil companies use such systems today.

Roots

The use of inventory proportionality in the United States is thought to have been inspired by Japanese just-in-time parts inventory management made famous by Toyota Motors in the 1980s.

High-level inventory management

It seems that around 1880 there was a change in manufacturing practice from companies with relatively homogeneous lines of products to horizontally integrated companies with unprecedented diversity in processes and products. Those companies (especially in metalworking) attempted to achieve success through economies of scope—the gains of jointly producing two or more products in one facility. The managers now needed information on the effect of product-mix decisions on overall profits and therefore needed accurate product-cost information. A variety of attempts to achieve this were unsuccessful due to the huge overhead of the information processing of the time. However, the burgeoning need for financial reporting after 1900 created unavoidable pressure for financial accounting of stock and the management need to cost manage products became overshadowed. In particular, it was the need for audited accounts that sealed the fate of managerial cost accounting. The dominance of financial reporting accounting over management accounting remains to this day with few exceptions, and the financial reporting definitions of 'cost' have distorted effective management 'cost' accounting since that time. This is particularly true of inventory.

Hence, high-level financial inventory has these two basic formulas, which relate to the accounting period:

1. Cost of beginning inventory at the start of the period + inventory purchases within the period + cost of production within the period = cost of goods available
2. Cost of goods available − cost of ending inventory at the end of the period = cost of goods sold.

The benefit of these formulas is that the first absorbs all overheads of production and raw material costs into a value of inventory for reporting. The second formula then creates the new start point for the next period and gives a figure to be subtracted from the sales price to determine some form of sales-margin figure.

Manufacturing management is more interested in inventory turnover ratio or average days to sell inventory (also known as **Days Inventory Outstanding** or **DIO**) since it tells them something about relative inventory levels.

Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO)

Inventory turnover ratio (also known as inventory turns)

$\text{Inventory Turnover Ratio}=\frac{\text{Cost of Goods Sold}}{\text{Average Inventory}}=\frac{\text{Cost of Goods Sold}}{\frac{\text{Beginning Inventory}+\text{Ending Inventory}}{2}}$

and its inverse

Average Days to Sell Inventory (Days Inventory Outstanding)

$\text{Average Days to Sell Inventory}=\frac{\text{Number of Days in a Year}}{\text{Inventory Turnover Ratio}}=\frac{365}{\text{Inventory Turnover Ratio}}$

To understand the broader impact of inventory on liquidity, management also monitors the collection and payment cycles:

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)

The average time taken to collect cash from sales.

$\text{DSO}=\frac{\text{Average Accounts Receivable}}{\text{Total Credit Sales}}\times 365$

Days Payable Outstanding (DPO)

The average time a company takes to pay its suppliers.

$\text{DPO}=\frac{\text{Average Accounts Payable}}{\text{Cost of Goods Sold}}\times 365$

Cash Conversion Cycle (CCC)

The total time it takes to convert resource inputs into cash flows.

$\text{CCC}=\text{DIO (Average Days to Sell Inventory)}+\text{DSO}-\text{DPO}$

While these KPIs measure different operational stages, they are logically linked within the Operating Cycle. Manufacturing management focuses on DIO to optimize production flow, while financial management monitors DSO and DPO to ensure liquidity.

While these accounting measures of inventory are very useful because of their simplicity, they are also fraught with the danger of their own assumptions. There are, in fact, so many things that can vary hidden under this appearance of simplicity that a variety of 'adjusting' assumptions may be used. These include:

• Specific Identification
• Lower of cost or market
• Weighted Average Cost
• Moving-Average Cost
• FIFO and LIFO.
• Queueing theory.

Inventory Turn is a financial accounting tool for evaluating inventory and it is not necessarily a management tool. Inventory management should be forward looking. The methodology applied is based on historical cost of goods sold. The ratio may not be able to reflect the usability of future production demand, as well as customer demand.

Business models, including Just in Time (JIT) Inventory, Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) and Customer Managed Inventory (CMI), attempt to minimize on-hand inventory and increase inventory turns. VMI and CMI have gained considerable attention due to the success of third-party vendors who offer added expertise and knowledge that organizations may not possess.

Accounting for inventory

Each country has its own rules about accounting for inventory that fit with their financial-reporting rules. For example, organizations in the U.S. define inventory within US GAAP, defined by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and enforced by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Internationally, most countries follow the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

The internal costing/valuation of inventory can be complex. In modern multistage-process companies, much inventory is held as 'work in process' (WIP). This needs to be valued in the accounts, but the valuation is a management decision involving the allocation of overheads.

Financial accounting

Inventory appears as a current asset on an organization's balance sheet because the organization can, in principle, turn it into cash by selling it.

Associated costs for warehouse space, insurance, and obsolescence (known as holding costs) can mount up to between a third and a half of the acquisition value per year. To manage these, businesses use ratios such as the **Inventory Turnover Ratio** and **Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO)**:

$\text{Inventory Turnover Ratio}=\frac{\text{Cost of Goods Sold}}{\frac{\text{Beginning Inventory}+\text{Ending Inventory}}{2}}$

$\text{DIO}=\frac{365}{\text{Inventory Turnover Ratio}}$

FIFO vs. LIFO accounting

When costs vary over time, accountants must choose a cost flow assumption to value inventory and calculate the cost of goods sold (COGS):

• **FIFO (First-In, First-Out):** Assumes the oldest inventory items are sold first. This reflects current replacement costs on the balance sheet.
• **LIFO (Last-In, First-Out):** Assumes the newest items are sold first. In inflationary environments, this increases COGS and reduces taxable income.

Inventory Method Comparison

Method	Balance Sheet Effect	Income Statement Effect	Regulatory Status
FIFO	Reflects current costs	Higher profit in inflation	Allowed (IAS 2, FRS 102, US GAAP)
LIFO	Reflects older (lower) costs	Lower profit in inflation	**Prohibited** (IAS 2, FRS 102); Allowed (US GAAP)

Standard cost accounting

Standard cost accounting uses ratios called efficiencies to compare actual usage to "standard" conditions.

$\text{Material Variance}=(\text{Actual Quantity}\times \text{Actual Price})-(\text{Standard Quantity}\times \text{Standard Price})$

While useful for budgeting, standard costing can create incentives to overproduce (to absorb overheads), leading to bloated inventories.

Theory of constraints cost accounting

Eliyahu M. Goldratt's throughput accounting focuses on three primary metrics to manage the system:

1. **Throughput:** The rate at which the system generates money through sales.
2. **Inventory:** All the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it intends to sell.
3. **Operating Expense:** All the money the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput.

In this model, labor is often treated as a fixed cost rather than a variable cost, shifting focus from labor efficiency to the "bottleneck" management of the production flow.

Audit of inventory

As a primary component of working capital, inventory represents a significant asset on the balance sheet, requiring careful management to balance the costs of holding stock against the need to meet customer demand. Because inventory is often a high-value asset susceptible to obsolescence or shrinkage, it is a focal point of financial audits. Under ISA 501, auditors are generally required to attend physical inventory counts to verify the existence and condition of stock. Accurate cut-off procedures and cost-flow assumptions, such as FIFO or LIFO, are essential to ensure that the cost of goods sold (COGS) and ending inventory balances are fairly stated in the financial statements.

Auditor objectives

The primary objective of the auditor under ISA 501 is to obtain evidence regarding the:

• Existence: Verification that the inventory recorded in the financial statements actually exists and is owned by the entity.
• Condition: Assessment of whether the inventory is damaged, obsolete, or aging, which impacts its valuation under the lower of cost or market or net realizable value principle.

Glossary of inventory audit terms

To ensure clarity in the audit process, the following terminology is used:

Floor-to-Sheet

A procedure where the auditor selects an item from the physical warehouse floor and traces it back to management's count sheet to test for completeness (ensuring all physical stock is recorded).

Sheet-to-Floor

A procedure where the auditor selects an entry from the count sheet and finds the item on the warehouse floor to test for existence (ensuring recorded stock actually exists).

Vouching

Checking a recorded transaction in the ledger against supporting source documents (e.g., invoices, GRNs).

Tracing

Following a source document through the accounting system to ensure it has been recorded in the ledger.

Roll-forward / Roll-back

Procedures used when the physical count is not performed on the balance sheet date. The auditor "rolls forward" the count by adding purchases and subtracting sales that occurred between the count date and year-end.

Inventory Audit Risk Mapping

Audit Risk	Financial Assertion	Audit Response (Procedures)
Inventory is overstated and does not exist.	Existence	Attend physical inventory count and perform test counts.
Inventory is obsolete or damaged but recorded at full cost.	Valuation	Inspect inventory condition during count; review slow-moving inventory reports.
Inventory is recorded in the wrong accounting period.	Cut-off	Perform cut-off testing on shipping and receiving documents.
Inventory held by third parties is omitted or falsified.	Rights & Obligations	Request direct confirmation from third-party custodians.
Overhead allocation is mathematically incorrect.	Accuracy	Re-perform overhead allocation calculations and test input data.

Physical inventory counting

If inventory is material to the financial statements, the auditor is required to attend the physical inventory counting unless it is impracticable. This attendance serves as a test of control or a substantive procedure. According to Paragraph 4 of ISA 501, the auditor must:

Evaluate management’s instructions

Determining if the entity's procedures for recording and controlling the count results are adequate.

Observe the count

Ensuring that management's personnel are following the specified count instructions.

Inspect the inventory

Identifying items that may be obsolete or damaged.

Perform test counts

Tracing items from management's count records to the physical inventory and vice-versa to ensure accuracy.

Inventory held by third parties

For material inventory under the control of a third party, the auditor shall obtain evidence by requesting confirmation from the third party as to the quantities and condition of the inventory held, or by performing an inspection of the third party's counting procedures.

Inventory valuation and NRV testing

Auditors must ensure that inventory is valued at the lower of cost and net realizable value (NRV) in accordance with IAS 2. NRV is the estimated selling price in the ordinary course of business less the estimated costs of completion and sale.

Audit procedures for NRV

• Testing for Obsolescence: Reviewing "aged inventory reports" to identify items that have not moved for a long period.
• Price Testing: Comparing the cost of inventory items to recent sales invoices after the balance sheet date. If the selling price (minus costs to sell) is lower than the cost, a write-down is required.
• Review of Completion Costs: For work-in-process (WIP), auditors evaluate the reasonableness of management’s estimates regarding the remaining costs to finish the goods.

Inventory cut-off tests

An essential substantive procedure is the cut-off test, ensuring that receipts and shipments are recorded in the correct period:

The Cut-off Principle

• Goods In: Verified via Goods Received Notes (GRN). Goods received before the period-end must be included in both the physical inventory count and the accounts payable.
• Goods Out: Verified via Goods Delivery Notes (GDN). Goods shipped before the period-end must be excluded from the physical inventory count and included in the cost of goods sold (COGS) and sales revenue.

Audit Procedures

The auditor obtains the "last used" document numbers at year-end to ensure a clean break in the accounting records. They then select a sample of documents from just before and just after the period-end and trace them to the ledger to ensure they were recorded in the correct period.

Alternative procedures and scope limitations

In cases where attendance is impracticable, the auditor must perform alternative audit procedures, such as inspecting documentation of subsequent sales or purchases. If the auditor is unable to obtain sufficient evidence through alternative means, they are required to modify the opinion in the auditor’s report in accordance with ISA 705 (Revised).

Audit of inventory

Specific considerations for the audit of inventory are governed by ISA 501 and national standards such as IDW PS 301. These standards dictate how an auditor obtains evidence regarding the existence and condition of inventory.

Audit of the internal control system

Before performing direct tests, the auditor evaluates the entity's internal control system (ICS). This involves an appraisal of the inventory guidelines regarding:

• Control procedures: Rules for counting, including the management of used and unused count sheets.
• Categorization: Identification of work in process, obsolete items, and third-party stock.
• Movement of goods: Documentation of stock transfers and cut-off procedures.

Substantive audit procedures

Based on the risk assessment of the internal control system, the auditor must perform substantive procedures. According to IDW PS 301.18, the auditor is required to:

• Physical Inspection: Directly inspect the physical stock recorded in the inventory records to verify its quantity and condition.
• Test Counts: Perform independent sample counts to verify the results of the entity's physical stocktaking.
• Documentation Review: Inspect final inventory lists and, where necessary, create copies of original count protocols to ensure the final records accurately reflect the actual count results.

Audit of special inventory methods

Standard auditing rules are adapted when an entity uses specialized inventory methods as defined in IDW PS 301 (Tz. 24–32):

Specialized Inventory Methods & Audit Focus

Method	Reference	Audit Requirement
Extended Stocktaking	IDW PS 301.24	Verification of counts performed shortly before or after the balance sheet date.
Forward/Backward Shifted Inventory	IDW PS 301.25	Audit of the reconciliation (roll-forward/roll-back) to the balance sheet date.
Perpetual Inventory	IDW PS 301.26	Testing the reliability of the perpetual records and the frequency of continuous counts.
Fully Automated Systems	IDW PS 301.27	Testing the system logic and manual intervention controls in automated warehouses.
Inventory Sampling	IDW PS 301.29	Evaluation of the statistical methods used to estimate total stock value.
Third-Party Custody	IDW PS 301.32	Obtaining direct confirmations or inspecting third-party storage facilities.

National accounts

Inventories also play an important role in national accounts and the analysis of the business cycle. Some short-term macroeconomic fluctuations are attributed to the inventory cycle.

Distressed inventory

Also known as distressed or expired stock, distressed inventory is inventory whose potential to be sold at a normal cost has passed or will soon pass. In certain industries it could also mean that the stock is or will soon be impossible to sell. Examples of distressed inventory include products which have reached their expiry date, or have reached a date in advance of expiry at which the planned market will no longer purchase them (e.g. 3 months left to expiry), clothing which is out of fashion, music which is no longer popular and old newspapers or magazines. It also includes computer or consumer-electronic equipment which is obsolete or discontinued and whose manufacturer is unable to support it, along with products which use that type of equipment e.g. VHS format equipment and videos.

In 2001, Cisco wrote off inventory worth US$2.25 billion due to duplicate orders. This is considered one of the biggest inventory write-offs in business history.

Stock rotation

Stock rotation is the practice of changing the way inventory is displayed on a regular basis. This is most commonly used in hospitality and retail - particularity where food products are sold. For example, in the case of supermarkets that a customer frequents on a regular basis, the customer may know exactly what they want and where it is. This results in many customers going straight to the product they seek and do not look at other items on sale. To discourage this practice, stores will rotate the location of stock to encourage customers to look through the entire store. This is in hopes the customer will pick up items they would not normally see.

Inventory credit

Inventory credit refers to the use of stock, or inventory, as collateral to raise finance. Where banks may be reluctant to accept traditional collateral, for example in developing countries where land title may be lacking, inventory credit is a potentially important way of overcoming financing constraints. This is not a new concept; archaeological evidence suggests that it was practiced in Ancient Rome. Obtaining finance against stocks of a wide range of products held in a bonded warehouse is common in much of the world. It is, for example, used with Parmesan cheese in Italy. Inventory credit on the basis of stored agricultural produce is widely used in Latin American countries and in some Asian countries. A precondition for such credit is that banks must be confident that the stored product will be available if they need to call on the collateral; this implies the existence of a reliable network of certified warehouses. Banks also face problems in valuing the inventory. The possibility of sudden falls in commodity prices means that they are usually reluctant to lend more than about 60% of the value of the inventory at the time of the loan.

Journal

• International Journal of Inventory Research
• Omega - The International Journal of Management Science

See also

• Cash conversion cycle
• Consignment stock
• Cost of goods sold
• Economic order quantity
• Inventory investment
• Inventory management software
• Logistics
• Operations research
• Pinch point (economics)
• Project production management
• Service level
• Spare part
• Stock management

Further reading

• Cannella S., Ciancimino E. (2010) Up-to-date Supply Chain Management: the Coordinated (S, R). In "Advanced Manufacturing and Sustainable Logistics". Dangelmaier W. et al. (Eds.) 175–185. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, Germany.