Question

Compose a proposed thesis statement for the inventory management plan that you will develop. Submit an outline of your proposed inventory management plan. Selected industry is soda manufacturers.

Answer 1

Inventory management plan:

For any organization, it is very important to manage the inventory in a way so that right amount of inventory is made available for production of goods. By inventory management we mean, planning, controlling, organizing the goods and materials that are required for the business. Managing inventory is very important task and need high degree of planning with efficiency. Following is the inventory management plan for soda manufacturers:

• Forecasting the inventory required: the first step would be to forecast the exact amount of materials that will be required by the company to manufacture the product. Forecasting should be done accurately to avoid under and over stocking in such a way that the production department never faces material shortage.
• Ordering the required amount of inventory: next, the company should order the suppliers to provide with the ordered amount of inventory, at the desired time. The time to reorder should be pre decided and calculate, keeping in mind the buffer stock.
• Storing the inventory: next comes the provision to store the inventory ordered by the company. Storage should be done in a way that it reduces the carrying cost for the company. Proper location and warehouses should be available for keeping the inventory safe for the required number of period.
• Using the best method for giving out/ issuing inventory: the inventory managing department is responsible to give out/ issue inventory to production department as and when required. The selected method would be FIFO (first in first out), where the inventory ordered first, will be issued first to the production department.
• Maintaining stock register: in order to keep correct track of the inventory in the organization, the stock register need to be maintained with purchase and issue entries entered in it. Maintaining stock register will help in calculating the amount of inventory and the time when it need to be re- ordered.
• Auditing the stock: in order to check if the stock register is maintained properly, timely audit of the stock register is required to be conducted, so that the number of inventory can be counted and cross checked with the register.
• Regular quality controls: the organization should also conduct regular quality checks to ensure that none of the inventory is being wasted and that optimum use of the inventory in hand is being done by the production department.

It is important to note here, that the inventory management plans may vary from organization to organization, but the basic steps and objectives will remain the same. Moreover, the inventory plan might vary from time to time and need to be changed as per the external situation demands.