Production Module – Subcontracting and Materials Issue
Production Order Subcontracting – In the age of production outsourcing and the organizational focus on their core competency, subcontracting of production orders is assuming greater importance. In addition to the business functionality necessary for producing goods in house, sub contraction operations necessitates some additional business process such as generation of sub contracting purchase order. Sub […]
The New Economics of the Music Industry
The economics of the music industry has been radically changed in the past two decades or so. Ever since the internet became a reality, music could be shared for free. The entire industry faced the onslaught of the latest developments in web technology. Companies like Napster encouraged piracy and allowed users to download and share […]
Value Analysis: An Applied Concept for Manufacturing and Service Industry
Introduction All organizations strive to create value for their customers. This value creates mind space for product and services. Value analysis, therefore, is a scientific method to increase this value. Value is a perception hence every customer will have their own perceptions on how they define value. However, overall at the highest level, value is […]
Transnational Corporations and Business Continuity Programs
Transnational corporations or Multinational Companies as they are also called need to have robust and well thought out business continuity programs if they are to manage the myriad risks arising out of their business operations. MNC’s typically operate in several countries and hence the risks faced by their businesses depend on the location in which […]
International Trade Terms – INCOTERMS
Globalization has given impetus of international trade which is increasing by the day. International trade involves multiple agencies, transportation agents, carriers as well as Customs and Banks etc of the two countries involved in trade. Any Export or Import transaction involves transportation of goods predominantly via sea or air and in some cases over the […]
Inventory management as well as Supply chain operations are often overlapping and hold the key to the success of sales operations. In all of the businesses be in automobile, manufacturing, pharma or retail industry, status of inventory reflects the health of the business.
Inventory operations have two key elements namely Inventory System and Physical operations. Today inventory systems have replaced the book keeping and financial accounting that was being practiced earlier. Current inventory systems not only do the book keeping but are linked to upstream as well as down stream activities including procurement, sales processing, financial accounting.
In terms of measuring a sales performance in relation to Inventory, we often use the term Inventory Turnover. Inventory turnover simply refers to the number of times the inventory is sold or used in a period of one year. Inventory turnover is also termed as stock turn, or stock turnover.
Inventory Turnover is calculated by taking the Total Cost of Goods Sold, divided by Average Inventory. Adding together Beginning inventory and ending inventory and dividing the figure by 2 in turn calculate average Inventory.
The inventory turnover as a measure of health of sales and business is used extensively in Retail, textile as well as FMCG segments. A higher inventory turnover does indicate a healthy trend of increased sales and indicates the need to maintain adequate inventory levels to avoid stock outs. In adequate stocks can result in loss of business opportunities and is something that the management needs to keep watching closely. On the other hand a lower inventory turnover shows that either the sales of the said inventory is slowing down or that the unused inventory is building up clogging the system somewhere. A slow inventory turn can help the inventory manager focus on finding non-moving, obsolete and slow moving inventory items and thereby steps can be taken to deal with them appropriately.
Inventory turnover also reflects the holding cost that is incurred in managing inventory. Increased inventory turns reduce the holding costs. The costs especially fixed costs like rent and cost of operations get distributed over higher inventory throughput and thereby the cost of inventory transactions reduces.
Inventory turnover is also indicative of the health of inventory operations. When the inventory turnover is higher, the inventory operations efficiency will also be high to meet with the increased operational requirements thereby good house keeping and increased responsiveness to market requirements.
Inventory turn in some cases or some systems is also calculated based on the numbers sold rather than the average value of inventory. In such a system the Inventory turn is calculated by dividing the Number of Units Sold divided by the Average number of Units inventory held in a given period of time.
Over a number of years, each industry has developed methods to check inventory turnover and industry standards have been standardized. So whenever a new business venture is set up, they are able to have the industry standard as benchmark to be achieved and use it as a guide to streamline operations.
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