by Jon Schreibfeder | Mar 5, 2003 | Forecasting
“What you sold or used in the past is usually a good indication of what you will sell or use in the future”. This is one of the basic “truths” of forecasting future demand of stocked items. In our last article, “Why Weekly Forecasting...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Mar 1, 2003 | Forecasting
Recently I received a call from a distributor who had a dilemma. They were running out of a particular popular product every month. The buyer’s frustration vibrated through the phone line as I spoke to her. She explained, “We’re doing a pretty good...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Sep 2, 2002 | General
Most of the articles on our website involve inventory that is either assembled or stocked for resale to other companies or organizations. In recent months we’ve received a lot of inquiries about managing products that are going to be consumed internally by an...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Jul 1, 2002 | Replenishment Parameters
When the stock level of an item falls below the minimum quantity, it is time to reorder the product, right? But we’ve found some instances where it is difficult to maintain accurate stock levels because it is impractical to record each individual material...
by Jon Schreibfeder | May 2, 2002 | Forecasting
A customer requests a product and it’s not in stock. They can’t wait for you to obtain the item so they purchase it elsewhere. You’ve lost a sale. That means you have lost the opportunity to earn a profit, disappointed the customer, and probably put...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Mar 1, 2002 | Physical Inventory – Cycle Counting
In previous articles we’ve described cycle counting, the process of counting some stock items or warehouse locations every day, as a valuable tool in ensuring the accuracy of your perpetual inventory. We’ve seen numerous cases in which organizations, after...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Jan 2, 2002 | Replenishment Parameters
It is no secret that an accurate forecast of the future demand of a product is crucial in achieving the four “rights” of effective inventory management: that is, getting the right quantity of the right item to the right location at the right time. As...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Nov 1, 2001 | Forecasting
I received a call from one of my customers this afternoon. “Jon, something is wrong with my demand forecast. We usually have a sharp drop in usage in January because several customers have shutdowns. But the forecast is recommending we stock almost twice as much...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Aug 10, 2001 | Replenishment Parameters
I visited a large manufacturer last week to review their inventory management polices and procedures. I was impressed with their knowledge and the systems they had in place. As I spoke with various department managers, one question was continually asked: “How...
by Jon Schreibfeder | Aug 2, 2001 | Stocking Decisions
In the past several months we’ve published several articles concerning the risk of new inventory items becoming dead stock. We’ve emphasized that you must carefully consider each new stocking opportunity. Unfortunately the decisions concerning stocking new...
