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Inventory (American English) or stock (British English) refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation. [ nb 1 ] Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the shape and placement of stocked goods.
In certain business operations, taking a physical inventory is impossible or impractical. In such a situation, it is necessary to estimate the inventory cost. Two very popular methods are 1)- retail inventory method, and 2)- gross profit (or gross margin) method. The retail inventory method uses a cost to retail price ratio.
Inventory planning involves using forecasting techniques to estimate the inventory required to meet consumer demand. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] The process uses data from customer demand patterns, market trends , supply patterns, and historical sales to generate a demand plan that predicts product needs over a specified period.
Stock-taking or "inventory checking" or "wall-to-wall" is the physical verification of the quantities and condition of items held in an inventory or warehouse. This may be done to provide an audit of existing stock. It is also the source of stock discrepancy information.
Inventory management is a broader term pertaining to the regulation of all inventory aspects, from what is already present in the warehouse to how the inventory arrived and where the product's final destination will be. [2] This management involves tracking field inventory throughout the supply chain, from sourcing to order fulfilment.
Inventory optimization refers to the techniques used by businesses to improve their oversight, control and management of inventory size and location across their extended supply network. [1] It has been observed within operations research that "every company has the challenge of matching its supply volume to customer demand.
A positive flow of intended inventory investment occurs when a firm expects that sales will be high enough that the current level of inventories on hand may be insufficient—perhaps because in the presence of very short-term fluctuations in the timing of customer purchases, there is a risk of temporarily being unable to supply the product when a customer demands it.
In inventory management, a stock keeping unit (abbreviated as SKU, pronounced es-kay-YOO or SKEW [1]) is the unit of measure in which the stocks of a material are managed.It is a distinct type of item for sale, [2] purchase, or tracking in inventory, [3] such as a product or service, and all attributes associated with the item type that distinguish it from other item types (for a product ...