Operations Management: Inventory Management

Course details

Inventories include an organization's raw materials, work in process, supplies used in operations, and finished goods. A major part of organization's capital and costs are involved in maintaining and managing inventories. Consequently, organizations work to achieve an ideal size of inventory to reduce costs and improve the bottom line while ensuring their ability to make products and services available to their customers. Although inventory management is commonly associated with the manufacturing sector, many of its concepts and tools can also be applied to the service industry. This course deals with the key aspects of inventory management in a manufacturing or a service organization. It walks the learner through the valuation of inventories and the most common costs associated with ordering and holding inventories. The course also covers how to determine an economic order quantity and the reorder point for inventories. Finally, the course provides a basic overview of some common inventory management systems such as, material resource planning and just-in-time management.

• match types of inventory with their description
• identify key characteristics and challenges of inventory management in service organizations
• match inventory valuation methods with their descriptions
• classify examples of inventory costs as being procurement, holding, or stock-out costs
• calculate the economic order quantity and the reorder point in a given inventory management scenario
• identify key characteristics of ABC analysis, MRP, ERP, and JIT