Strategies for Inventory Management
With the increasing concern revolving around the additional spending cuts as well as persistent threat of counterfeit products coming in from Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages, or Diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS), overseas, and sustainable inventory concerns, strategies for inventory management must be dynamic enough to acknowledge and address rising problems while simultaneously upholding stringent protections on already emphasized problems found industry wide. Failing to cooperate and accommodate new approaches which are focused on dealing with new problems will inevitably lead to a weakened supply chain, program failure, as well as poor inventory management. An unstructured and unorganized inventory management system will face struggles in reacting to new problems at each individual level of the process, which may lead to constraint issues and can potentially magnify other problems such as minimal product supply or excess inventory.
Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages happens when a resource for a particular item has discontinued production or when that product has been terminated. Diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) can lead to an increased chance of procuring counterfeit products, as a product with low supply is especially vulnerable to counterfeiting. Therefore, the manufacturer faces an additional level of risk when attempting to maintain continuity of production. It is vital for a distributor to maintain a documented and stringent counterfeit mitigation program which details an end-to-end strategy which implements the quality requirements throughout the whole supply chain. This will help to address DMSMS risks and will help to minimize the chance of purchasing counterfeit products.
Excess inventory may potentially lead to problems in the future which can diminish mission-critical programs as well as the entire long-term outlook. Strategies which address an excess inventory should be focused on both supply chain and financial requirements. Although, focusing too much on one or the other can be disruptive, as doing so may lead to inventory remaining idle in the books or an expensive write-down.
An incomplete or broken strategy which fails to address each issue that a supply chain encounters on an industry-wide basis allows for each step and process within the strategy to be vulnerable to threats from outside. These outside threats may contribute to creating constraints on the system.