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Strategic Inventory
Strategic inventory is a collection of stored goods where the primary rationale is rooted in the strategic interaction among involved parties within a supply chain. Different from other motives for inventory management, such as fixed costs (e.g. cyclic inventory in the economic order quantity model), uncertainties in demand and supply (safety stock), and fluctuations in prices (speculative stock), strategic inventories emerge as a distinctive category. Inventory theory indicates that maintaining inventories beyond immediate demand can yield advantages by curbing the bargaining power of suppliers. This strategic action influences the supplier to impose higher prices during initial periods, capitalizing on the heightened demand resulting from building strategic inventories. Subsequently, the supplier competes against these strategic inventories in later periods. Dynamic prices may be a consequence of strategic stock management. Examples of industries known for extensive reliance on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Game Theory
Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed two-person zero-sum games, in which a participant's gains or losses are exactly balanced by the losses and gains of the other participant. In the 1950s, it was extended to the study of non zero-sum games, and was eventually applied to a wide range of Human behavior, behavioral relations. It is now an umbrella term for the science of rational Decision-making, decision making in humans, animals, and computers. Modern game theory began with the idea of mixed-strategy equilibria in two-person zero-sum games and its proof by John von Neumann. Von Neumann's original proof used the Brouwer fixed-point theorem on continuous mappings into compact convex sets, which became a standard method in game theory and mathematical economics. His paper was f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supply Chain
A supply chain is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers, while supply chain management deals with the flow of goods in distribution channels within the supply chain in the most efficient manner. In sophisticated supply chain systems, used products may re-enter the supply chain at any point where residual value is recyclable. Supply chains link value chains. Suppliers in a supply chain are often ranked by "tier", with first-tier suppliers supplying directly to the client, second-tier suppliers supplying to the first tier, and so on. The phrase "supply chain" may have been first published in a 1905 article in ''The Independent (New York City), The Independent'' which briefly mentions the difficulty of "keeping a supply chain with India unbroken" during the British expedition to Tibet. Overview A typical supply chain can be divided into two stages namely, produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Field Inventory Management
Inventory management, also known as field inventory management, is the task of understanding the stock mix of a company and the handling of the different demands placed on that stock. The demands are influenced by both externality, external and Internality, internal factors and are balanced by the creation of purchase order requests to keep supplies at a reasonable or prescribed level. Inventory management is important for every other business enterprise. It includes tasks related to setting and reviewing inventory targets.Gartner, Inc.Cover Considerations — How to Optimize Retail and Consumer Product Inventory Targets published on 15 February 2017, accessed on 25 April 2025 Overview A typical inventory management process for a retail business follows the following sequence: # Request for new inventory from stores to head office, # Head office issues a purchase order to the vendor, # Vendor ships the goods, # Warehouse receives the goods, # Warehouse stores and distributes to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Order Quantity Model
Economic order quantity (EOQ), also known as financial purchase quantity or economic buying quantity, is the order quantity that minimizes the total holding costs and ordering costs in inventory management. It is one of the oldest classical production scheduling models. The model was developed by Ford W. Harris in 1913, but the consultant R. H. Wilson applied it extensively, and he and K. Andler are given credit for their in-depth analysis. Overview The EOQ indicates the optimal number of units to order to minimize the total cost associated with the purchase, delivery, and storage of a product. EOQ applies only when demand for a product is constant over a period of time (such as a year) and each new order is delivered in full when inventory reaches zero. There is a fixed cost for each order placed, regardless of the quantity of items ordered; an order is assumed to contain only one type of inventory item. There is also a cost for each unit held in storage, commonly known as holdi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Safety Stock
Safety stock is a term used by logistics, logisticians to describe a level of extra inventory, stock which is maintained to mitigate the risk of stockouts, which can be caused, for example, by shortfalls in raw material availability or uncertainty in forecasting supply and demand. Adequate safety stock levels permit business operations to proceed according to their plans.Monk, Ellen and Bret Wagner. Concepts in Enterprise Resource Planning. 3rd Edition. Boston: Course Technology Cengage Learning, 2009. Safety stock is held when uncertainty exists in demand, supply, or manufacturing yield, and serves as an insurance against stockouts. Safety stock is an additional quantity of an item held in the inventory to reduce the risk that the item will be out of stock. It acts as a buffer stock in case sales are greater than planned and/or the supplier is unable to deliver the additional units at the expected time. With a new product, safety stock can be used as a strategic tool until the com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inventory Theory
Material theory (or more formally the mathematical theory of inventory and production) is the sub-specialty within operations research and operations management that is concerned with the design of production/inventory systems to minimize costs: it studies the decisions faced by firms and the military in connection with manufacturing, warehousing, supply chains, spare part allocation and so on and provides the mathematical foundation for logistics. The inventory control problem is the problem faced by a firm that must decide how much to order in each time period to meet demand for its products. The problem can be modeled using mathematical techniques of optimal control, dynamic programming and flow network, network optimization. The study of such models is part of inventory theory. Issues One issue is infrequent large orders vs. frequent small orders. Large orders will increase the amount of inventory on hand, which is costly, but may benefit from volume discounts. Frequent order ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bargaining Power
Bargaining power is the relative ability of parties in a negotiation (such as bargaining, contract writing, or making an agreement) to exert influence over each other in order to achieve favourable terms in an agreement. This power is derived from various factors such as each party’s alternatives to the current deal, the value of what is being negotiated, and the urgency of reaching an agreement. A party's bargaining power can significantly shift the outcome of negotiations, leading to more advantageous positions for those who possess greater leverage. If both parties are on an equal footing in a debate, then they will have equal bargaining power, such as in a perfectly competitive market, or between an evenly matched monopoly and monopsony. In many cases, bargaining power is not static and can be enhanced through strategic actions such as improving one's alternatives, increasing the perceived value of one's offer, or altering the negotiation timeline. A party's bargaining pow ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fossil Fuel
A fossil fuel is a flammable carbon compound- or hydrocarbon-containing material formed naturally in the Earth's crust from the buried remains of prehistoric organisms (animals, plants or microplanktons), a process that occurs within geological formations. Reservoirs of such compound mixtures, such as coal, petroleum and natural gas, can be extracted and burnt as fuel for human consumption to provide energy for direct use (such as for cooking, heating or lighting), to power heat engines (such as steam or internal combustion engines) that can propel vehicles, or to generate electricity via steam turbine generators. Some fossil fuels are further refined into derivatives such as kerosene, gasoline and diesel, or converted into petrochemicals such as polyolefins ( plastics), aromatics and synthetic resins. The origin of fossil fuels is the anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms. The conversion from these organic materials to high-carbon fossil fuels is ty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping levels are present in the same crystal, they form a semiconductor junction. The behavior of charge carriers, which include electrons, ions, and electron holes, at these junctions is the basis of diodes, transistors, and most modern electronics. Some examples of semiconductors are silicon, germanium, gallium arsenide, and elements near the so-called " metalloid staircase" on the periodic table. After silicon, gallium arsenide is the second-most common semiconductor and is used in laser diodes, solar cells, microwave-frequency integrated circuits, and others. Silicon is a critical element for fabricating most electronic circuits. Semiconductor devices can display a range of different useful properties, such as passing current more easil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inventory
Inventory (British English) or stock (American English) is a quantity of the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation. Inventory management is a discipline primarily about specifying the shape and placement of stocked goods. It is required at different locations within a facility or within many locations of a supply network to precede the regular and planned course of production and stock of materials. The concept of inventory, stock or work in process (or work in progress) has been extended from manufacturing systems to service businesses and projects, by generalizing the definition to be "all work within the process of production—all work that is or has occurred prior to the completion of production". In the context of a manufacturing production system, inventory refers to all work that has occurred—raw materials, partially finished products, finished products prior to sale and departure from the manufacturing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
