Components of a Project Plan
Introduction This article details the high level project plan and the components of the same. A project is a success if it meets the objectives of time, cost, technical and business. Project objectives are defined in the preliminary project scope statement. As mentioned above, a project is deemed complete if the project objectives have been […]
Planning Functionality of an ERP System – Setting up of Planning Engine
In customer centric business environment, it is critical to have an effective plan to manage production capacity, materials availability and shipment schedules. The planning functionality of an ERP system provides organizations the means of meeting such customer centric approach. Planners are able to simulate alternate scenario planning wherefrom they determine which assemblies and components to […]
Costs in Project Management – Costs associated with the Projects
Types of Costs The following are the costs associated with the projects. Direct costs Any costs that are directly attributable to the work on the project. These can include the salaries paid to the resources, the billing rate of the resources and costs of the software and hardware that are used for building the website […]
Criticisms of Globalization: Growing Income Inequality
More Losers than Winners The previous articles in this module covered the topic of globalization in depth. Some of the points of discussion were about how globalization has succeeded in lifting millions of people out of poverty. While accepting this fact, it is also the case that globalization has created income inequality which when coupled […]
Business Process Reengineering and Best Practices
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) evolved almost at the same time i.e. 1st half of 1990. Both relates to radical redesign of an organization at a relatively short period. Both are having the primary intend to optimize workflow and improve productivity. But, the chicken and egg question remained, whether an organization […]
Inventory procurement, storage and management is associated with huge costs associated with each these functions.
Inventory costs are basically categorized into three headings:
Cost of procurement and inbound logistics costs form a part of Ordering Cost. Ordering Cost is dependant and varies based on two factors - The cost of ordering excess and the Cost of ordering too less.
Both these factors move in opposite directions to each other. Ordering excess quantity will result in carrying cost of inventory. Where as ordering less will result in increase of replenishment cost and ordering costs.
These two above costs together are called Total Stocking Cost. If you plot the order quantity vs the TSC, you will see the graph declining gradually until a certain point after which with every increase in quantity the TSC will proportionately show an increase.
This functional analysis and cost implications form the basis of determining the Inventory Procurement decision by answering the two basic fundamental questions - How Much to Order and When to Order.
How much to order is determined by arriving at the Economic Order Quantity or EOQ.
Inventory storage and maintenance involves various types of costs namely:
Inventory carrying involves Inventory storage and management either using in house facilities or external warehouses owned and managed by third party vendors. In both cases, inventory management and process involves extensive use of Building, Material Handling Equipments, IT Software applications and Hardware Equipments coupled managed by Operations and Management Staff resources.
Inventory storage costs typically include Cost of Building Rental and facility maintenance and related costs. Cost of Material Handling Equipments, IT Hardware and applications, including cost of purchase, depreciation or rental or lease as the case may be. Further costs include operational costs, consumables, communication costs and utilities, besides the cost of human resources employed in operations as well as management.
Includes the costs of investments, interest on working capital, taxes on inventory paid, insurance costs and other costs associate with legal liabilities.
The inventory storage costs as well as cost of capital is dependant upon and varies with the decision of the management to manage inventory in house or through outsourced vendors and third party service providers.
Current times, the trend is increasingly in favor of outsourcing the inventory management to third party service provides. For one thing the organizations find that managing inventory operations requires certain core competencies, which may not be inline with their business competencies. They would rather outsource to a supplier who has the required competency than build them in house.
Secondly in case of large-scale warehouse operations, the scale of investments may be too huge in terms of cost of building and material handling equipments etc. Besides the project may span over a longer period of several years, thus blocking capital of the company, which can be utilized into more important areas such as R & D, Expansion etc. than by staying invested into the project.
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