Inventory Planning Blog

Inventory Planning: Reports and Spreadsheets

Posted on Mon, Feb 04,2013@10:00 AM

Reports and Spreadsheets– An Unproductive Combination for Inventory Planning

Reports and spreadsheets should be used to provide a basic level of information. However, many companies and planners use reports & spreadsheets to completely manage their inventory. To understand the use of these tools on effectiveness and efficiency in inventory planning let’s explore each one independently.

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Tags: Inventory Planning, cloud, web based inventory software, NetSuite, Supply Chain Managment, IBM, mistakes, Spreadsheets

Inventory Planning and Optimization in the Cloud

Posted on Mon, Jan 28,2013@09:00 AM

Cloud Applications Going Forward

Advances in technology have allowed previous concepts like Time-Sharing and Shared servers and services to become a reality. Cloud computing today has real meaning and positive impact for companies in a true global economy. The future is that more business applications for mobile computing will be available and virtual software appliances will be developed.

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP Business One, cloud, inventory optimization, SaaS, NetSuite, IBM, Sage, Valogix

Manufacturing Inventory Planning

Posted on Mon, Nov 19,2012@02:32 PM

Danger Ahead! Inherent Challenges When you Need to Combine MRP & DRP Inventory Planning

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP Business One, inventory optimization, NetSuite, IBM, Sage, Valogix

The State of Inventory Planning - Chapter 5

Posted on Tue, Sep 25,2012@10:00 AM

Achievable Bottom Line Results

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP, SaaS, NetSuite, IBM, web based inventory planning, Sage, Valogix

The State of Inventory Planning - Chapter 4

Posted on Tue, Sep 04,2012@05:00 AM

 WAYS TO IMPROVE REPLENISHMENT PLANNING

Intelligent replenishment inventory planning includes several components, of which forecasting is just one element. Complete, automated planning systems handle all behavior including low volume items as part of a total process. Advanced planning solutions also incorporate inventory optimization, which dramatically improve replenishment planning. Why? Because optimization considers the wild cards in planning. It considers how random the demand of an item is, i.e., standard deviation and service level objectives, and it does it for each item, at every location, leaving nothing to chance (no spreadsheet can do that!)

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP Business One, SaaS, NetSuite, Supply Chain Managment, IBM, web based inventory planning, Sage, Valogix

The State of Inventory Planning - Chapter 3

Posted on Thu, Aug 23,2012@09:50 AM

THREE COMMON SENSE APPROACHES TO INVENTORY PLANNING

How should a planner set the reorder point and reorder quantity (or order-up-to level) for thousands of items, perhaps at multiple locations? Due to the absence of an "intelligent‟ planning system, three commonly used approaches have been Brute Force Review, Economic Order Quantity, and Periods of Supply, usually done in spreadsheets.

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP Business One, SaaS, NetSuite, IBM, web based inventory planning

The State of Inventory Planning - Chapter 2

Posted on Tue, Jul 31,2012@08:49 AM

STEPS IN THE PLANNING PROCESS

Companies approach their inventory planning in many different ways - from seat of the pants guessing, team collaboration, and spreadsheets. More and more companies are using forecasts either developed in-house or off-the-shelf forecasting packages.

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP, NetSuite, IBM, web based inventory planning, Valogix

The State of Inventory Planning - Chapter 1

Posted on Mon, Jul 09,2012@07:00 AM

What state is your business in?

Until recently Small and Mid-size Businesses (SMB) did not have affordable, easy to use software tools to help them effectively manage and balance their inventory investment. Software solutions that forecast, plan and optimize an inventory are found in widespread acceptance in large enterprise companies but these solutions can cost between hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and are generally not affordable or usable by SMBs.

In the vast majority of SMBs, spreadsheets are the common tool in use. They are time-consuming to build and maintain, are usually static data repositories, and according to a prior study by a major consulting firm over 90% of them contain significant errors. But they do serve a purpose. Inventory-laden companies like manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and aftermarket service organizations often see that inventory is their largest asset. The cost of carrying excess and obsolete stock, as well as not having sufficient saleable inventory to meet demand is enormously high.

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP Business One, SaaS, NetSuite, IBM, web based inventory planning, Valogix

Inventory Planning and Optimization for 2012 – The Clear Advantage

Posted on Tue, Jan 10,2012@11:44 AM

Happy New Year!  2012 brings the promise of improving global economies. Balancing short term resilience with longer term needs is what is needed now.  Reducing costs, buying less, increasing productivity, improving cash flow is important, and to keep these inventory objectives balanced and in perspective you need an efficient way to optimize these important business demands.   Improve your competitive advantages responsibly and efficiently with inventory planning optimization solutions.  Waiting until its too late in your ordering cycles will invite your customers to investigate other opportunities, and that can happen by making the reduction of the wrong item at the wrong time.
 
If your company tends to reduce items with the highest investment because it creates a larger reduction faster, what it actually does is creates potential stock outs, higher backorders and increased expedited shipping – and, even more importantly, customer dis-satisfaction.  We all know that when customers are unhappy they become former customers.  Randomly cutting inventory has been proven time and time again to be the wrong strategy as does overstocking your inventory.

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Tags: Inventory Planning, SAP Business One, cloud, inventory optimization, SaaS, Forecasting Inventory, advanced inventory planning solutions, replenishment planning, IBM, Wholesale Distribution, Supply Chain, manufacturing

How "Green" is Your Inventory Planning?

Posted on Tue, Apr 05,2011@02:33 PM

Inventory planning is more than simply having the right amount of stock on the shelf. With proper planning, the whole business is positively affected: from the planning to the bottom line. For companies with large inventories, 10,000+ items, manual planning and replenishment techniques like spreadsheets can be very time-consuming and are riddled with errors. Automated inventory planning and optimization solutions save time, money and computing resources, which contribute to “Green” IT. Web-based planning solutions can be deployed either on-premise or in a SaaS model, adding another layer of “Green” IT.



How “Green” is your IT? IBM partnered with Aberdeen Research to develop a web-based tool which in less than 10 minutes, will:

  • Compare your company's approach to common Green IT challenges with industry best practices

  • Receive best practice recommendations that you can put to immediate use

  • Receive ROI estimate based on your company's performance based on upgrading to a best in class approach

  • Access additional resources based on your specific needs


Download IBM’s Green IT Assessment Tool


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Tags: inventory optimization, IBM, Green IT, Valogix

Cutting Edge Technology For Inventory Planners

Posted on Thu, Nov 04,2010@02:51 PM

Ever hear the phrase, "time is money?" Well, time is money and spending time counting widgets and updating them on your spreadsheet is costing you a pretty penny (or many, many pretty pennies).  And what's worse, it's not possible to update every single item on your spreadsheet (even more impossible if you have several locations), meaning your data is out of date and you most likely have dead AND excess stock - costing you even more.


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Tags: advanced inventory planning solutions, IBM, Savvis

How Wholesalers Provide Value with Accurate Inventory Planning

Posted on Tue, Apr 27,2010@10:50 AM

What's getting in the way of providing customer value in wholesale distribution? Most often, it's the inability to balance stock levels with service levels. Hold onto too much inventory, and you end up paying for items that collect dust in the warehouse. Stock too little inventory and you won't be able to keep up with customer requests. Sometimes wholesale distributors end up with both problems: holding excess stock of items customers don't need.

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Tags: Inventory Planning, Forecasting Inventory, Demand Planning, IBM, Wholesale Distribution, SMB, Valogix