I’ve worked with manufacturing and distribution businesses for more than 25 years. The biggest asset these businesses have is often inventory. Inventory enables them to run their businesses, but also ties up capital that could be invested in additional product, advertising, capital projects, or expansion. Managing inventory is tricky, since too little inventory means that customer service will suffer. The best answer reduces inventory to a minimum and at the same time maintains or increases customer service.

Doing this effectively means using data from your accounting or ERP software to determine (a) which items to hold in inventory, (b) how much to hold, (c) when to reorder, (d) how much to reorder, and (e) when to change the answers to these items. A three-part webcast will teach you how to do this. The first part was posted in an earlier entry. You can watch the second part here.