I simply need suggestions from researchers about applying inventory management techniques to control inventory of a printing industry.
Printing on demand (Pull strategy) i.e., specific printing items. So you can follow any inventory management principles applying pul strategy. Else follow push strategy in case of possible speculation or forecasting of demand for standard item to print .
The inventory allocation depends on where the decoupling point is. You should manage with a Push strategy (certain forecasts) all materials that are upstream the decoupling point (e.g. ink, paper). But you should not allocate inventory downstream just because these products are difficult to standardize and you will have so many different product references to manage. For understand which is the best inventory model, you should identify the caracteristics of the items to stock i.e., storage ability, variability, order frequency, perishability, etc.
@Sidartha S. Padhi and @Miguel Cortes Castañeda Thanks for your answers.
There are types of inventory in the printing Industry, Spare parts inventory, Raw Material and Finished Product. we are focusing on the first two types of inventory only. For spare part inventory we have previous data of last one year, which give us information about unit price, rate of consumption of each item, delivery time, cost of unavailability, criticality of each item and nature of vendor (locally available or will be import on demand). I need suggestion for controlling spare parts inventory first.
Thanks again.
Waiting for your responses
Ok Muhammad, the first step you should follow is to cluster all that spare parts according to those characteristics you mentioned before (i.e. rate of consumtion, delivery time...). Try to find the most important variables for you (and the industry) like costs or flexibility. After clustering all similar items, you will have different inventory management approaches to follow. For example, for those items which are critical in cost of unavailability you may set different parameters compared to the less critical ones. After this analysis you will have certain options to apply in Inventory mangement like EOQ, Fixed replenishment interval, Smin and Smax model, Lumpy (Croston) model for intermittent demand... etc.
Best regards
@Miguel Cortes Castañeda
I have done with ABC-VED matrix analysis which classify all items in 03 main categories and 09 sub-categories on the basis vitality and expenditures. Now i just need to determine the ordering quantity and re-ordering point.
I suggest the RFID of the best tools for controlling inventory of Printing Industry.
Best regards
Taher kalantari
What are your turns in inventory? WE have been running 11 turns in manufacturing. Very little make to stock with short lead times applying a TOC model.
use first ABC analysis to find out critical items. then there are various inventory management models like EOQ and other depending on the frequency of requirement and service level required.
Just for sharing
I suggest very simple tool for application but fundamental on improvement. I.e. 5S, particularly, the second S which is set-in -order . In this stage, the following key activities must be done.
- preparing sign board for controlling direction, location and quantity
- Performing painting strategy for separation of walk way and shelves.
- using color coding strategy.For example green color for availability of safe stock, yellow color for average presence of stock, red color for shortage of stock.
- preparing out line strategy. For example shadow board showing the shape of materials recommended for spareparts
- Preparing 5s board which is used for displaying any activities regarding to inventory.
Besides to this, i recommend also
- Application of the first in first out principle.
•U-shaped manufacturing cells,layout of equipment by process instead of operation
•Production leveling
•Regulating the flow of production
•Pull production using kanban
•Quick changeover operations
My regards
Haftu H.
You should look into DDMRP as a offshoot of a TOC. They can provide tools that you can simply put in play yourself. I don't agree with using 5S as a inventory control measure. It does not give you the strategic flexibility nor real time feedback on causes to growth.
You must answer these questions in order to really make a impact.
What is the goal?
What to change?
What to Change to?
How to cause the change?
The above questions will lead you to
Problem Finding
Idea Finding
Obstacle Finding
Solution Finding
I am a absolute supporter of the TLS concept to managing operations. But the solution has to be the teams solution to be effective.
Don
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