Inventory control

Inventory Control is the supervision of supply, storage and accessibility of items in order to ensure an adequate supply without excessive oversupply. Stock control is defined as "the activity of checking a shop’s stock".^[1]

It can also be referred as internal control - an accounting procedure or system designed to promote efficiency or assure the implementation of a policy or safeguard assets or avoid fraud and error etc.

Inventory control may refer to:

• In economics, the inventory control problem, which aims to reduce overhead cost without hurting sales
• In the field of loss prevention, systems designed to introduce technical barriers to shoplifting

It answers the 3 basic questions of any supply chain:

1. When?

2. Where?

3. How much?

Stock control systems

Many shops now use stock control systems. The term "stock control system" can be used to include various aspects of controlling the amount of stock on the shelves and in the stockroom and how reordering happens. Typical features of stock control software include:^[2]

• Ensuring that the products are on the shelf in shops in just the right quantity.
• Recognizing when a customer has bought a product.
• Automatically signalling when more products need to be put on the shelf from the stockroom.
• Automatically reordering stock at the appropriate time from the main warehouse.
• Automatically producing management information reports that could be used both by local managers and at head office.

These might detail what has sold, how quickly and at what price, for example. Reports could be used to predict when to stock up on extra products, for example, at Christmas or to make decisions about special offers, discontinuing products and so on. Sending reordering information not only to the warehouse but also directly to the factory producing the products to enable them to optimize production.

Advantages and disadvantages

Stock control systems ensure that shelves are appropriately stocked. If there is too much stock, it ties up a company's money, money that might be better spent on reducing their overdraft, on advertising the business or on paying for better facilities for customers, for example. Too much stock means that some perishable products might not sell and would have to be thrown away and this would reduce a stock control system outweigh the disadvantages.

References

See also

• Inventory
• Inventory control system
• Inventory management software
• Operations management
• Supply chain management
• Vendor-managed inventory
• Warehouse management system