Inventory optimization system is a proven vehicle to gain competitive value through reduced buffer stock, freed-up working capital and improved service levels. Leading the inventory optimization initiative in your organization requires more than an appreciation for its enormous cost savings and customer service improvements—it helps to put in place six crucial success-drivers:
- Build executive support within supply-side procurement, manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing, finance, and strategic planning, and create a shared understanding of the supply chain, with inventory-related KPIs visible among business units.
- Learn your organization’s planning process, from the strategic, policy-setting level through the tactical target-setting level, and then to the execution phase.
- Exploit the knowledge of planners who are in the trenches day-to-day. They must validate inventory optimization results on an ongoing basis. When planners take ownership of the numbers they will not revert to simplistic methods.
- Long, multi-year rollouts are vulnerable to shifts in focus and budget. Take advantage of the fact that inventory optimization solutions do not require a massive integration project.
- Business and supply chain networks are diverse: data may not be available uniformly. Your IT department needs the flexibility to use data from multiple platforms and systems to drive the right business policies.
- Your multi-stage, international supply chain will shift and change in reaction to events. Factor in the global nature of your business and select a technology that can reliably reduce end-to-end inventories across functions and facilities.