Inventory & Planning

Understand the difference between Vendor-Managed Inventory (VMI) and consignment inventory, including ownership, replenishment responsibility, working capital, controls, KPIs and practical examples.

A practical guide to consignment inventory covering ownership, consumption, settlement, stock control, supplier/buyer responsibilities, risks, reconciliation and examples.

Cross-docking moves goods from inbound to outbound flow with minimal storage. Learn the cross-docking process, common types, control points, KPIs and when it can reduce handling and inventory...

A practical guide to implementing Vendor-Managed Inventory, including data sharing, replenishment rules, min/max levels, responsibilities, controls, KPIs and a worked example.

VED/VEN analysis classifies inventory by operational or clinical criticality rather than by value or movement speed. Learn how to define Vital, Essential and Desirable/Non-essential items, set policies and...

A practical guide to ABC and VED/VEN inventory analysis, including annual consumption value, criticality, Pareto logic, worked examples and an ABC-criticality matrix.

A practical FSN inventory guide showing how to classify fast-, slow- and non-moving items using issue frequency or days since movement, set business-specific thresholds, and combine FSN with...

Understand the bullwhip effect, the four classic causes, how demand variability becomes amplified upstream, how to measure it and practical ways to reduce it.

Learn how to calculate inventory carrying cost and Economic Order Quantity (EOQ), including cost-of-capital, storage, insurance, obsolescence and shrinkage, with a corrected worked example and practical limitations.

Understand cycle stock versus safety stock, how they work together, the reorder point formula, worked examples, service-level trade-offs and practical inventory controls.