Inventory Control (For People Who Really Have to Do It) Volume II in the Useful Management Series

Inventory Control (For People Who Really Have to Do It) is a cookbook of quick and dirty methods for solving problems in real-world inventory control. This book is for bottom- to mid-level managers and small businesses where computers are either too expensive or labor is too cheap or too uneducated to justify anything but the use of common sense. It is also aimed at unpretentious community colleges and business schools that want to teach people something they can use! The book begins by taking on the most used (wrongly) method in the inventory world — the economic order quantity. The authors point out that this method (like any other) depends on data you can trust, such as delivery dates and the real need dates seldom given to you by salespeople. The book tries to warn the unwary reader that every method carries a bag of assumptions that need to be carefully addressed before using these methods. A number of chapters on political aspects of inventory control based on the authors' experiences are included.