Nếu có một chỉ thị quản lý để làm giảm tổng mức đầu tư trong hàng tồn kho, các nhân viên lập kế hoạch sản xuất có thể có ít thời gian để làm như vậy, đặc biệt là nếu có hàng ngàn các bộ phận trong kho để được xem xét. Một lựa chọn đơn giản là chỉ làm giảm mức hàng tồn kho cho các tập hợp con của mục có mức độ sử dụng cao. | Inventory Best Practices I 207 ment including in the discussion the cost of this policy in terms of incremental inventory investment. High customer service levels may mandate a large safety stock for each finished goods item. However what if product demand is highly seasonal Safety stock levels may still result in stock outs during high-demand periods and excessive inventory during low-demand periods. To avoid this problem consider scheduling periodic adjustments to safety stock levels for those inventory items that are known to have seasonal demand. If there is a management directive to reduce the total investment in inventory the production planning staff may have little time to do so especially if there are thousands of parts in stock to be reviewed. A simple alternative is to only reduce inventory levels for the subset of items with high usage levels. The turnover rates on these items is so rapid that any reduction actions taken will be reflected in an inventory reduction in a short period. Conversely if inventory reduction actions were taken on slow-moving inventory it could be months before there is any discernible impact on the total inventory investment. The planning staff can save more time in reducing inventory by using an in-house material requirements planning system to model the impact of changes in safety stock lot sizes or lead times on the total level of inventory investment. A company may distribute inventory to customers from regional warehouses. If so it must stock a sufficient inventory quantity in each location to meet expected customer demand. An alternative is to centralize the storage of smaller or expensive items so a smaller quantity can be stored in one location for distribution to all customers. This approach circumvents regional warehouses and their primary reason for existence rapid delivery to customers so be sure to only centralize those inventory items that can reasonably be inexpensively shipped by overnight delivery services .
