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Background Maintaining an adequate level of inventory is critical since an enormous amount of capital tied up with it. Having excess inventory leads to wastage. On the contrary, insufficient commodity leads to stock out. Hence, this study aimed to assess inventory management practices of program commodities at Ethiopian Pharmaceutical Supply Agency. Methods A descriptive cross-sectional study complemented with a qualitative method was conducted from February 21 to April 20/2019. Order fill rate, wastage rate, frequency of emergency order, acceptable storage condition met, and stock out were the metrics we used to measure the inventory management practices of the agency. Quantitative data were collected through physical observation of the warehouses and review of logistics management tools. Seventeen in-depth interviews were conducted to explore the challenges of inventory management. Results From the total 70 program commodities managed by the agency, 2.1% wasted due to expiration and damage. These resulted in a loss of over US $2 million. The highest wastage was recorded for antimalarials which accounted for 13.1% of the malaria commodities' total inventory value. Only 14.8% of the orders were fulfilled above 80%. Thirty-seven items were stock out on average for 8.5 average days. Longer duration of stock out (260 days) was recorded for TB commodities. Seventeen items from different programs were purchased through emergency orders with a higher frequency of levonorgestrel purchase. Only 6 (60%) warehouses met acceptable storage conditions. Space deficit, outdated warehouse designs, shortage of warehouse equipment, lack of precise data, and capacity building gaps were the inventory management challenges identified. Conclusion Though the wastage rate was near to the acceptable range, there were lesser order fill rates, storage condition inadequacy, and significant stock-outs of program commodities. The finding implies the need for an improvement in inventory management practice of the agency.

The social environment in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth live influences health and wellbeing. We describe the development of the LGBTQ Supportive Environments Inventory (LGBTQ SEI), designed to quantify the LGBTQ-inclusiveness of social environments in the US and Canada. We quantify aspects of the social environment: 1) Presence/quality of LGBTQ youth-serving organizations; 2) LGBTQ-inclusive Community Resources; 3) Socioeconomic and Political environment. Using GIS tools, we aggregated data to buffers around 397 schools in 3 regions. The LGBTQ SEI can be used to assess the role of the social environment in reducing health disparities for LGBTQ youth.

Inventory management deals with a tradeoff between the benefits of keeping stocks of goods that allows fulfillment of the customer’s demand, and the cost of carrying inventory. Inventory control te...

Clarifying the trends in quantity, location, and causes of PM2.5 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter

This study analyses inventory reductions as a means of short-term financing of firms under financial distress. We use quarterly panel data of U.S. manufacturing firms for the period from 1995 to 2007. We identify a sample of 198 distressed firms for which we analyse changes in relative inventory. Approximately 70% of distressed firms reduce their inventories until the end of their individual distress periods. This decrease corresponds to a mean reduction of 18.7 inventory days or 9.4%. Additional regression analyses show that differences in inventory adjustments depend on pre-distress inventory performance, firm size, and turnaround strategy. We also compile a sample of 142 firms that defaulted to analyse inventory actions of unsuccessful turnarounds. Our findings indicate that defaulting firms also reduce their inventories but that the reductions are lower than those of firms that resolve their financial distress. We conclude that distressed firms use short-term inventory adjustments to free up cash and ...

This study investigates the relevance of net financial expenses with respect to equity valuation in an IFRS accounting regime. According to the residual earnings valuation model, income related to balance sheet items that are recorded at fair value is not applicable for valuation purposes. There are no residual earnings associated with these items because the balance sheet provides ‘perfect’ value estimates for the items in question. In accordance with the contention that under IFRS, aggregate net financial liabilities are recorded at a book value that is close to fair value, this study demonstrates that net financial expenses are not associated with the market prices of stocks. The investigation discusses the empirical findings in light of the enduring controversies regarding the use of fair value accounting.

The inventory model in this paper is targeted to production systems with constant production rates but underlying possibilities for undesirable circumstances to threaten the production schedule. The inventory policy proposed explicitly considers energy cost when determining optimal size for order quantity, safety stock and inventory cycle length such that the total expected cost per unit time is minimised. The results are compared to a traditional inventory policy that does not consider the direct impact of energy cost. An analysis of the model reveals three production environment characteristics in which inventory policies are most significantly affected by changes in energy cost: heavy product weight, high regular product demand or high emergency product demand. If any one of the three key factors increases, then changes of the inventory decisions or related logistics costs become more significant. The cost effectiveness of implementing the proposed inventory policy also becomes more significant as any ...

This article examines multiple inventory methods and findings from the inventory processes at the University of Mississippi Libraries. In an attempt to reduce user frustration from not being able to locate materials, the University of Mississippi Libraries conducted an inventory process beginning with a pilot inventory of a branch library and a sample inventory at the Main Library followed by full inventory of sections of the Main Library's one-million-plus collection. The benefits of inventories, including cost effective, efficient workflows, are discussed.

Many manufacturing and service organizations invest a large amount of capital in inventory. For this reason, it is important for inventory managers to reduce the costs associated with inventory. Firms that carry a variety of items require a classification system for the effective management of inventory. The ABC support system is a well-established inventory planning and control method that is used to manage different classes of inventory and reduce inventory costs concurrently. This paper presents a decision support system for ABC inventory management that can be used by managers to determine the efficiency of their inventory policies and to evaluate inventory decisions. The mathematical formulas to support inventory decisions are discussed. Since managers must manage in term of dollars, the quantitative tools are explained in terms suitable for management.

According to the ‘zero inventory’ paradigm, inventory reflects waste and should be eliminated in order for performance to rise. In this study, we investigate the effect of inventory holding on firm performance, analysing 3057 firm years of data. Interpreting performance as a function of inventory, results show that firms with the lowest inventory have the worst performance (and vice versa). When understanding inventory as a function of performance, results indicate that low-performing firms carry the least inventory, whereas high-performing firms have the highest stocks. Besides questions of causality, our results do not support a paradigm which suggests that firms should move toward zero inventory.

In this paper, considering the empirical trend for sales and price of fashion apparels as prototype, optimal ordering policy for a single period stochastic inventory model is investigated. The impact of the presence of random lead time and declining selling price on the profitability of the retailer is explored. Existence of unique optimal solutions for net profit functions is proved. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate the method of identifying profitable levels of inventory holding and penalty costs. Percentage profit per unit investment in inventory is obtained in order to assist managers in taking business decisions, specifically to the extent of whether or not to take up a particular business under known constraints. It is demonstrated that the optimal inventory policy in the absence of price decline and lead time differs considerably from that when lead time and price decline are simultaneously considered.

In the highly competitive retail industry many retailers bundle goods with optional value-added packages to enhance the attraction of the goods and increase their revenue. Offering such packages affects the sales and hence the inventory management of the goods. To maximize the benefits of bundling, the package offerings should vary with the inventory level of the goods. In this paper we propose a model to analyze the joint optimal management of a single good and its associated package offering and inventory control for the good. We define a procedure to construct superior offerings, which are shown to contain the optimal package offerings for all inventory levels of the goods. After obtaining the structural properties of the superior offerings and applying an existing result on the optimal inventory control, we deduce that the optimal inventory management policy is of the reorder-point, order-up-to-level, or (s, S), type, and the optimal choice of the package offering at any given inventory level...

Evaluations of inventory methods usually end when precision and bias are quantified. Additional information on the appropriateness of a method may be provided through cost-plus-loss analyses, where the total costs are calculated as the sum of net present value (NPV) losses, i.e. expected economic losses as a result of future incorrect decisions due to errors in measurements, and inventory costs. The aim of the study was to compare inventories of basal area, dominant height and number of trees per hectare based on photo-interpretation and laser scanning from two sites in Norway by means of cost-plus-loss analyses. In general, more precise estimates were found for laser scanning than for photo-interpretation, while the biases were about equally distributed between the two methods. On average for the two sites, the inventory costs, NPV losses and total costs for photo-interpretation were about 6, 49 and 54 euros ha−1, respectively, while they were 11, 13 and 25 euros ha−1 for laser scanning. The data used fo...

(2001). Developing needs-based inventory methods for non-timber forest products Report of the ETFRN research workshop held 4–5 May 2000 at FAO in Rome. Forests, Trees and Livelihoods: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 81-84.

Classical inventory control, using an ex-ante optimization approach and tending to recommend large stockholdings, has been criticized over recent decades. As a result, just in time (JIT) based inve...

In this paper, an inventory model under the conditions of permissible delay in payments and time value of money will be considered. The main purpose is to characterize and decide the behaviour and optimal inventory cycle time of the present value function of all future cash outflows. We explore the properties of the present value functions of all future cash outflows and show that they are convex. Bounds for the optimal inventory cycle time are provided. The bounds will be useful in search procedures for determining the optimal inventory cycle time.

This paper reports on two efforts to develop methods for quantifying and analysing greenhouse gas emissions from local places. The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives‐Cities for Climate Protection (ICLEI‐CCP) campaign and the Association of American Geographers‐Global Change in Local Places (AAG‐GCLP) project represent independent efforts with differing origins and objectives. There is a rich and dynamic fine structure to the causal patterns that determine the level of greenhouse gas emissions in the society. This fine structure is essentially opaque to national and state‐level inventories and analyses, and yet understanding it is necessary to understanding how human communities can be organised and human enterprise structured in environmentally sustainable ways. Simplified inventory methods that account for most but not all emissions, use readily available local data and, most important, inform efforts at emission reduction are currently available for cities and could be ma...

This paper scrutinizes the Lawrence Manufacturing Co. accounts in the 1840s and challenges the inferences that have been drawn in previous literature both about the degree of sophistication of cost accounting practice that the accounts of such textile mills exhibit during this period and about their use for management purposes. The accounting computations have previously been taken as evidence that a modern managerial approach was already being adopted in manufacturing contexts, for the purpose of developing a regime of cost control and performativity within the factory. This paper suggests that they have a different explanation: as calculations made for classic mercantile purposes, in order to track flows of money spent and received in manufacturing. It thereby contributes to a debate in which Yamey has been a leading figure, concerning the dangers of anachronism when considering the accounting practices of earlier times, and the importance of allowing modern intent in such accounting only after the most...

This study attempts to determine the level of accounting harmonisation in the European Community by examining selected measurement practices from the 1992/93 annual reports of companies from Belgium, Denmark. France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands. Portugal and the UK. Harmonisation is tested using the chi-square statistic and measured using the / index. The chi-square statistic tests for the equality of the proportions of accounting measurement methods across countries. The / index measures the extent of concentration around a particular accounting measurement method. The results reveal that accounting for foreign currency translation of assets and liabilities, treatment of translation differences, and inventory valuation are harmonised, while accounting for fixed asset valuation, depreciation, goodwill, research and development costs, inventory costing, and foreign currency translation of revenues and expenses are not harmonised. The results also demonstrate that the extent of harmonisation ...

This paper reports and comments on the findings from a questionnaire survey on the product costing practices used by 260 UK manufacturing companies. The aims of the paper are (1) to provide evidence to ascertain the extent to which recent criticisms of product costing can be judged and (2) to compare and comment upon the theory and practice of product costing. The survey findings indicate that product costs computed to meet inventory valuation requirements are widely used for decision-making and internal profit measurement. The majority of firms, however, used both full costs and variable costs for decision-making and the findings suggest that product cost information is used in a more flexible manner than that depicted by previous studies. The paper reports on the methods used by companies to compute full product costs. Most organizations used questionable overhead allocations that are likely to result in the reporting of distorted product costs. The concluding sections of the paper discuss the possible ...

In a recent paper, Christy and Kanet (1990) examined the performance of several dispatching rules in a forbidden early shipment environment. Their primary performance measure was time-weighted inventory value. This study re-examines their results using a new model, with a net present value (NPV) performance measure. The results show that using NPV and inventory objectives lead to different scheduling decisions. Also examined are the reasons for relatively poor performance of operation-based due date rules.

(1987). Accounting for Inventory Carrying Costs. The Journal of Cost Analysis: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 1-6.

(1974). The Enterprise Value Concept of Asset Valuation. Accounting and Business Research: Vol. 4, No. 15, pp. 220-226.

The problem of returning or of selling the inventory excess to optimal stock level is considered for an order-level system. Two inventory models, viz. the infinite and the finite horizon models, are developed; in which lead time is zero and shortages are allowed. Examples are given to illustrate the derived models.

In this article a profit maximization problem for the production firm is considered when the units produced are sold by the firm under an Order-Level-Lot-Size inventory system for the storage unit attached to the production. A numerical example is given to illustrate the results derived.

Inventory costs for a fixed time period have traditionally been determined by allocating total costs per cycle uniformly throughout that cycle as well as any partial cycles. This procedure for cost allocation has led to the solution of numerous inventory problems, most notable of which is the anticipated price-increase model. When comparing two out-of-phase inventory models, if costs are accounted for when they occur over a fixed planning horizon, inventory policies should be changed to reflect the impact of this different cost-allocation procedure. For the anticipated price-increase model, the 'optimal' order quantity as well as the implied savings in inventory costs will be different when cost models are developed based on these different cost-allocation methods. If the objective is to maximize over a fixed planning horizon the actual savings in inventory costs as they occur, the cost models presented here should be used.

In a recent study by Gurnani (1983), ‘Economic analysis of inventory systems’, three main conclusions were presented. (1) The inventory models analysed in his paper demonstrate that the inventory policy derived from the discounted (PW) coat differs substantially from that given by the traditional undiscounted inventory analysis. (2) The difference between the two depends upon the discounting rate. The discounting causes the optimum order quantity and correspondingly the period length to vary monotonically with the discounting rate. (3) However, it is not influenced by the inventory system planning horizon. This paper first examines each conclusion and demonstrates why his conclusions are either unfounded or irrelevant to his analysis. Next, some crucial derivational errors in his exposition are demonstrated via corrected formulations. Finally, a net present value maximizing framework that is consistent with modern theory of financial analysis, is suggested for the economic analysis of inventory s...

The economic order quantity method is examined in the context of a required minimum valuation of a multi-product inventory. Such a context may arise when inventories are pledged to secure a loan. Two cases are developed according to the contractual nature of the minimum valuation requirement, and computational procedures are provided for each case. Implicit costs and loan interest rates attributable to valuation guarantees are examined via two examples. A management tool, the "c-over-v rule", emerges as a useful concept for allocating required buffer stocks and for estimating the maximum marginal loan interest rates attributable to valuation guarantees.

An implicit assumption underlying most inventory systems is that the lot ordered will not contain any defective, i.e., unsaleable items when delivered and so there will be no ‘shortages’ in the delivery in the sense that every unit of the product in the accepted lot is of perfect quality and therefore fully acceptable to the customers. Such an assumption is not always tenable in view of the extensive use of acceptance sampling by business and industry in the quality control process. The presence of defective items in the traditional inventory models which foresee no such possibility would certainly disrupt the systems in use, and consequently entail higher operating cost on the inventory management. With an aim to broaden the base of applications, and to demonstrate the impacts of the possible presence of defective products upon the structure and the cost of certain inventory systems, this paper extends two inventory models to the case where the proportion of defective units in the accepted lot is a rando...

Traditional inventory analysis is based on undiscounted constant cycle costs. Often it has been argued that incorporating the time value of money will not have a significant effect on the lot size. This paper presents discounted cost analysis of a few inventory models. Effect of discounting rate on the economic order quantity is studied. Alternative discounted profit functions are also given

A particular joint products situation and the type of industry are first described. Since the measurement of rate of return on inventory investment assumes the knowledge of an inventory value structure, a section is devoted to the definition of a facility capital expense framework for production. The problem is formulated and the solution search technique briefly indicated. Results for a particular problem are presented together with the effects of some elementary parameter variations.

(1985). The effect of inventory valuation methods on share prices: Some new evidence for the JSE. Investment Analysts Journal: Vol. 14, No. 26, pp. 45-47.