库存管理-------外文翻译.doc

INVENTORY CONTROL 1. Importance and objectives of inventory control For more or less all organizations in any sector of the economy, supply chain management, i.e., the control of the material flow from suppliers of raw material to final customers is a crucial problem. The strategic importance of his area is today fully recognized by top management. The strategic importance of this area is today fully recognized by top management. The total investment in inventories is enormous, and the control of capital tied up in raw material, work-in-progress, and finished goods offers a very important potential for improvement. Scientific methods for inventory control can give a significant competitive advantage. This book deals with a wide range of significant competitive advantage. This book deals with a wide range of different inventory models that van be used when developing inventory control systems. Advances in information technology have drastically changed the possibilities to apply efficient inventory control techniques. Furthermore, the recent progress in research has resulted in new and more general methods that can reduce the supply chain costs substantially. The field of inventory control has indeed changed during the last decades. It used to mean application of simple decision rules, which essentially could be carried out manually. Modern inventory control is based on quite advanced and complex decision models, which may require considerable computational efforts. Inventories cannot be decoupled from other functions, for example purchasing, production, and marketing. As a matter of fact, the objective of inventory control is often to balance conflicting goals. One goal is, of course, to keep stock levels down to make cash available for other purposes. The purchasing manager may wish to order other large batches to get volume discounts. The production manager similarly wants long production runs to avoid time-consuming setups. He also prefers to have a large raw ma