Inventory Management Consulting by Jon and Matt Schreibfeder
Most inventory management consulting organizations aim to serve customers with the highest degree of satisfaction while simultaneously maximizing inventory profitability. Easier said than done!
At Effective Inventory Management (EIM), our consultants, Jon and Matt Schreibfeder, have brought over four decades of proven success, using comprehensive analysis procedures and customized, proprietary tools to maximize the productivity and profitability of your inventory investment. With extensive experience across industries and business sizes from small local distributors to global manufacturers and retailers, EIM delivers practical, customized solutions to help businesses excel at inventory management optimization and can offer advice to improve net profits.
Inventory Management Consulting Details & Options
Our inventory management consulting services are designed to address your organization’s unique needs and challenges. Key offerings include:
- Current Inventory Situation Analysis: Understand what’s working, what needs attention and the potential performance of your investment in inventory.
- Operations Analysis and Plan Development: Build actionable strategies that align with your organization’s unique business situation, environment and goals.
- Customized Programs to Address Specific Challenges: Tailored initiatives for everything from forecasting sporadic inventory to applying specific levels of safety stock that will balance your customer service level goals, your investment in inventory, and your organization’s profitability.
Through every engagement, we focus on practical steps that deliver measurable progress in inventory replenishment, customer service levels, and inventory profitability.
Why Choose EIM for Inventory Management Consulting?
With over 40 years of hands-on inventory management consulting experience, Jon and Matt Schreibfeder and the EIM team are uniquely equipped to drive transformative results. We will work with you to:
- Optimize Working Capital: Examine where excess and surplus inventory can be better utilized and eliminate obsolete inventory.
- Enhance Forecast Accuracy: Supplement your software with customized EIM forecasting/replenishment tools (which utilize both data and market knowledge) to ensure that your planning results in having the right quantity, of the right item, in the right location, at the right time.
- Improve Customer Service Level and Fill Rates: Maintain optimal levels of safety stock to minimize stockouts and disappointed customers while maximizing profitability.
- Streamline Supply Chains: Help select suppliers, coordinate with vendors to reduce lead times, and foster supply chain resilience.
By leveraging your software, our customized, proprietary tools and spreadsheets, and established industry best practices, EIM maximizes the productivity and profitability of your largest asset: inventory.
Our Proven Consulting Process
Our five-stage consulting methodology strives to get to know your organization, your inventory issues, to develop a customized list of recommendations and an action plan to achieve systematic and sustainable improvements:
- Discovery & Data Gathering
We will analyze data from your ERP system to collect key metrics like inventory turnover, lead times, unneeded inventory, forecast accuracy, service-level performance, and many others. We will also conduct interviews with key personnel (either on-site or virtually) and review your current policies and procedures to get to know your organization. Finally, we will fully explore your inventory challenges and goals to create a customized action plan.
- Gap Analysis & KPI Benchmarking
Every firm has unique potential, which is determined by its industry, market, location, and other factors. In our initial analysis, we will determine your potential performance and compare it to your current performance using industry-standard and customized metrics.
- Strategic Roadmap Development
Develop a customized action plan that includes demand forecasting improvements, safety stock optimization, effectively recalculating replenishment parameters on a regular basis, and SKU rationalization.
- Implementation & Change Management
Partner with your team to implement new processes, train personnel, and facilitate seamless transitions to improved inventory practices.
- Ongoing Performance Monitoring
Regularly track KPIs with detailed scorecards and performance reviews, adapting strategies as market demands and business objectives evolve.
Every phase emphasizes inventory management optimization to ensure ongoing operational excellence and competitive advantage.
Industries We Serve
Our expertise covers a broad range of industries and inventory models, including:
- Distribution & Wholesale (e.g., fast-moving consumer goods, industrial supplies)
- Manufacturing (e.g., raw materials, work-in-process, finished products)
- Retail & E-commerce (e.g., multi-location replenishment, drop-shipping models)
- Service Organizations (e.g., maintenance, repairs, and operations (MRO), non-profits, etc.)
No matter your organization’s size or market sector, our scalable consulting solutions deliver tangible, lasting results.
Ready to Transform Your Inventory?
Don’t let inventory challenges hold your business back. Contact us today to schedule a no-obligation consultation with Jon and Matt Schreibfeder. We will:
- Analyze your current situation and potential results
- Develop a list of recommendations
- Outline an action plan to achieve effective inventory management
After reviewing our analysis, recommendations, and action plan, you can decide whether to work with us. Discover how our targeted approach to inventory management optimization can unlock hidden profitability, improve customer satisfaction, and prepare your business for future growth.
Both effective inventory management and inventory control are essential in order to achieve the goal of effective inventory management. What is the difference between inventory control and inventory management?
- Inventory Management – Replenishing stock inventory with the right quantity, of the right item, in the right location, at the right time. Managing your inventory investment to maximize your net profits, or minimizing your inventory investment, while maintaining customer service goals.
- Inventory Control – Protecting the inventory you’ve purchased and stored in your facility and minimizing the cost of filling orders. That is controlling what you already own.
Effective Inventory Management, Inc. (EIM) is dedicated to helping distributors, manufacturers, retailers, and service organizations throughout the world achieve the goal of effective inventory management. EIM products and services include:
- Inventory Management and Inventory Control Workshops
- Books and Spreadsheet Sets that will help lead your organization to achieve Effective Inventory Management
- Consulting services that are customized to your needs and the inventory-related challenges you face.
Inventory Management Consulting Services
We will develop recommendations and customized tools that address your organization’s specific inventory challenges. The result will be an action plan that we will together execute to maximize the productivity and profitability of your inventory investment. This action plan may include:
- Changes to your current inventory-related policies and procedures.
- Analysis of how you use your current software.
- Development of customized spreadsheet tools.
- Suggestions of additional software that will address specific situations.
We begin by analyzing inventory data from your computer (ERP) system. In developing this analysis, we will:
- Identify possible dead stock and excess inventory
- Identify the products that probably should be stocked in each location.
- Highlight possible unusual activity in your sales or usage history.
- Determine the accuracy of your forecasts of future demand of products.
- From EIM’s library of forecast formulas, select the most accurate forecasting method (based on historical usage) for each item.
- Determine the best way to incorporate and evaluate market conditions and collaborative information from customers and salespeople into the forecast.
- Suggested replenishment parameters for each item.
- Calculate safety stock quantities required to achieve a certain level of service.
- Include a customized spreadsheet that can be utilized to upload the calculated replenishment parameters into your current computer software.
- Suggest a normal replenishment source for each item (i.e., vendor or transfer from another company location).
- Compare your current versus potential inventory investment and turnover.
- Project purchases and budgeted inventory amounts for each of the upcoming 12 months
- Provide inventory ranking by activity, profitability, and cost of goods sold.
- Suggested quantity of each product to be stored in a primary storage location.
- Determine the maximum and average on-hand quantity of each product that would need to be stocked in a surplus storage location.
Complete documentation is provided, as well as step-by-step instructions that allow you to produce the same analysis as often as you like in the future with updated inventory and sales data.
The actual analysis provided for a particular organization is dependent on factors such as:
- Industry
- Market Conditions
- Number of Stocking Locations (i.e., warehouses or branches)
- Number of Products Stocked in Each Location
- Profitability Objectives
Inventory Control Consulting Services
The goal of effective inventory control and warehouse management include:
- Store products to minimize the cost of filling orders
- Maintain accurate on-hand quantities
- Protect inventory from breakage, loss, spoilage, and theft
- Meet customer delivery expectations
- Operate a safe work environment
We begin the process of helping you achieve effective inventory control by looking at your current environment and situation. This review includes a detailed analysis of your material handling operations.
- Your basic rules for warehouse operations.
- A review of how you process every type of material-related transaction.
- Analyzing how products are stored in your warehouse.
- Determining if your warehouse space can be better utilized.
- Ensuring that your current storage units are appropriate for the material maintained in your facilities.
- Making sure you are using appropriate equipment and software? Can technology provide a cost-effective solution for lowering costs and reducing errors?
- How to ensure that inventory counts remain accurate.
- Ensuring that you have the right person in the right job.
- Creating comprehensive material handling policies and procedures manual.
- Helping you design and operate a safe working environment.
Here is a sample warehouse layout diagram (not to scale):
As with our inventory management consulting services, all of our inventory control projects include a year of phone/email/web-based support as we help you achieve effective inventory control.