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Inventory management is to improve economic benefit of project procurement management by means of dominating order cycle and order quantity to minimize the stocks and total cost under the circumstance of normal construction.Firstly,inventory management involves material order,and contractors need to calculate parameters such as order cycle,order fee,order quantity,stocks fee,order lead time and safe stocks in order to make the total inventory fee minimized during construction.This article applies one branch of operations research--"inventory" to optimize the inventory management.

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.

Research on sustainability performance has considerably enriched operations management literature in recent years. However, work with quantitative models is still scarce. This paper thus contributes to revisit classical inventory models by taking sustainability concerns into account. We believe that reducing all aspects of sustainable development to a single objective is not desirable. We thus reformulate the classical economic order quantity model as a multiobjective problem. We propose to refer to this model as the sustainable order quantity model. Then, a multi-echelon extension of the sustainable order quantity model is studied. For both models, the set of efficient solutions (Pareto optimal solutions) is analytically characterized. These results are used to provide some insights about the effectiveness of different regulatory policies to control carbon emissions. We also propose an interactive procedure that allows the decision maker to quickly identify his / her best option among these solutions. The proposed interactive procedure is a new combination of multi-criteria decision analysis techniques

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.

Classical inventory theory often assumes no discrepancies between recorded inventory and actual inventory. However, inventory records are usually inaccurate due to many reasons in practice. For example, inventory shrinkage refers to the difference between booked inventory that a company should have as a result of its sales, purchasing, and manufacturing processes and actual inventory that it has on hand. This paper concerns the impact of inventory shrinkage to a supply chain and investigates different strategies to deal with inventory shrinkage. We consider a single-period two-echelon supply chain consisting of a Stackelberg manufacturer and a retailer whose inventory is subject to shrinkage errors. Our analysis is based on a single-period newsvendor model and considers the following cases of order decisions: (a) the retailer ignores the inventory errors; (b) the retailer estimates the errors; (c) the retailer shares the inventory error information with the manufacturer; and (d) RFID technology is used to reduce or eliminate the errors. The first case is the base strategy and a common practice for many supply chains, the other two represent certain non-technological strategies of the retailer when dealing with inventory inaccuracy, and the last one represents a technology improvement strategy by the manufacturer to reduce or eliminate inventory shrinkage errors. We compare these improvement strategies and derive critical tag price for RFID implementation as a technological remedy for the inventory inaccuracy problem. Conditions for the profitability of RFID adoption are discussed.

Infrastructure are the essential element in the country for they are the basic facilities forming the basis of economic activity. In Korea Infrastructure which are subject to the management of government are increasing annually, and subsequently the budget of maintenance costs is expected to rise significantly. For the effective management of the constructed and accumulated infrastructure, the integrated management of the future assets will be needed which includes the determination of the asset status, management subjects, and the location, the maintenance of their performance and state, and the prediction of the cost required to increase their useful lifetime. However, in the domestic cases the road facilities valuation has not been done systematically, and the preparation and research on this is scarce. Thus, the systematic procedure for the road facilities valuation is required. In this paper the following study was conducted to derive the reasonable asset valuation methods. First, the valuation methods was investigated and summarized throughout the domestic and international research literature. Second, to apply the investigated valuation methods to the road facilities the valuation process that reflects domestic conditions and characteristics has been developed. Third, a working Bridge, Highways, and General national ways were applied to the general valuation process, and the results were analyzed. As a final step a schematic diagram of the asset management support by WDRC valuation method was presented.

We consider a setting in which inventory plays both promotional and service roles; that is, higher inventories not only improve service levels but also stimulate demand by serving as a promotional tool (e.g., as the result of advertising effect by the enhanced product visibility). Specifically, we study the periodic-review inventory systems in which the demand in each period is uncertain but increases with the inventory level. We investigate the multiperiod model with normal and expediting orders in each period, that is, any shortage will be met through emergency replenishment. Such a model takes the lost sales model as a special case. For the cases without and with fixed order costs, the optimal inventory replenishment policy is shown to be of the base-stock type and of the (s, S)type, respectively. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 59: 430-440, 2012

Terrestrial CO2 flux estimates are obtained from two fundamentally different methods generally termed bottom-up and top-down approaches. Inventory methods are one type of bottom-up approach which uses various sources of information such as crop production surveys and forest monitoring data to estimate the annual CO2 flux at locations covering a study region. Top-down approaches are various types of atmospheric inversion methods which use CO2 concentration measurements from monitoring towers and atmospheric transport models to estimate CO2 flux over a study region. Both methods can also quantify the uncertainty associated with their estimates. Historically, these two approaches have produced estimates that differ considerably. The goal of this work is to construct a statistical model which sensibly combines estimates from the two approaches to produce a new estimate of CO2 flux for our study region. The two approaches have complementary strengths and weaknesses, and our results show that certain aspects of the uncertainty associated with each of the approaches are greatly reduced by combining the methods. Our model is purposefully simple and designed to take the two approaches’ estimates and measures of uncertainty at ‘face value’. Specifically, we use a constrained least-squares approach to appropriately weigh the estimates by the inverse of their variance, and the constraint imposes agreement between the two sources. Our application involves nearly 18,000 flux estimates for the upper midwest United States. The constrained dependencies result in a non-sparse covariance matrix, but computation requires only minutes due to the structure of the model.

This case is designed to develop and assess critical thinking and decision making skills in the presence of conflicting goals. Strategic/critical thinking and decision modeling are identified in the AICPA’s Core Competency Framework. The case setting is a choice among alternative inventory methods for a small business that is seeking a loan to finance expansion. Students are instructed to justify their choice of inventory method based upon information found in a list of documents. These documents contain both relevant and irrelevant information. Although the inventory calculations are simple, neither they nor the method chosen are the focus of the case. Students need to evaluate the evidence in the documents, and no single recommendation is uniquely correct. Students’ written responses are evaluated on how well the recommendations are developed and supported by the evidence.

Accounting historians have not yet realized that there existed another complete accounting system before the formation of the modern accounting system of today which Johnson and Kaplan's Relevance Lost characterizes by the “integration” of cost and financial accounts supported by “inventory costing.” In that earlier accounting system, cost and profit calculations were made in a past particular ledger account or accounts, namely trading account(s), where accounting practices opposed to “inventory costing” and “integration” were used. The historical existence of that accounting system is overlooked by accounting historians. The example of the old Du Pont Company (DPC) this paper presents will bring it to light. Cost and profit calculation were made in four trading accounts in the double-entry ledger at the old DPC as it was purchased by the new DPC in 1902. One of its trading accounts dated back to 1804 when the old DPC started production of gunpowder. Early cost and profit calculations in that trading account were examined by the new DPC's staff in the early 1940s. They prepared schedules showing the cost data, sales revenues, and profit measurement recorded in the early trading account. These schedules give evidence that the old DPC recorded the costs incurred and used the cost data to compute profit for financial accounting purposes, but in different ways from today's “inventory costing” and “integration.” This old DPC's accounting system resulted from the application of the double-entry system to industrial accounting and was in use throughout the nineteenth century. By revealing the historical existence of that overlooked accounting system, this paper will show that accounting history may be described as evolution of the traditional accounting system made through double-entry bookkeeping in which the trading account was of vital importance and the transition from that traditional accounting system to the modern integrated accounting system supported by inventory costing.

The purpose of this study is to test empirically for the first time the general hypothesis that inventory to sales ratios have decreased over time in the German economy. Although inventory reduction has been a prevalent topic in the production and operations management literature, there is a lack of empirically confirmed answers to questions. They are as follows: Have inventories in German firms decreased overall during the past decades? What sectors of German industry are leading (lagging behind) inventory reduction? Has inventory reduction developed differently for raw materials, work-in-process, or finished goods? In which periods was marginal inventory reduction greatest? To the best of our knowledge, this empirical study is the first to broadly investigate inventory development from the 1970s until the present for a major European economy, Germany, and will provide the first answers to the research questions stated above using aggregate industry-level data provided by the Deutsche Bundesbank. We show that inventory levels decreased overall in many sectors of German industry. This reduction was mainly marked for raw materials and finished goods, particularly for the second-half of the time frame investigated.

Traffic signs are one of the important roadway assets. Transportation agencies are required to inventory sign assets, but current manual traffic sign inventory methods are labor-intensive and time-...

This research seeks to update and finally determine for the Fortune 500 whether the market values the inventory valuation choice of last-in, first-out (LIFO) over first-in, first-out (FIFO) as some signal of reporting and management quality. The market can adjust LIFO earnings to FIFO earnings. Thus, the only issue then is that companies choosing FIFO pay higher taxes, which shareowners should disfavor. Indeed, only 20 percent of the Fortune 500 utilize LIFO to value any inventory. However, after Spearman correlations and logistic regression, the research statistically significantly shows that investors are willing to give premiums on the price of stock for the choice of LIFO. Thus, companies should choose LIFO to reduce taxes and increase their stock prices.

Engineering-to-order has steadily increased shares of total production. By its own nature, the order specific products often come without pre-defined bills-of-materials which undermines the starting point of prevailing inventory planning methods. Manufacturers often have to confront with difficult, if not impossible, choices for meeting the highly responsive service level without investing in costly inventory, particularly for long lead time items. In this paper, a novel inventory planning approach is presented. Based on predetermined inventory budget, customer responsiveness can be optimized by considering risks associated with supply chain uncertainty, component commonality, substitution possibility, market intelligence, and other salient factors.

This learning strategy offers an efficient and effective technique for teaching inventory in the introductory financial accounting course. It is motivated by the belief that many students memorize how to calculate the cost of goods sold and ending inventory under different cost flow assumptions, but that few understand the subject. This fundamental lack of understanding prohibits them from fully appreciating other issues, such as the difference between the physical flow and the cost flow assumption, the relevance of the cost flow assumption when computing cost of goods sold and income, and the irrelevance of the cost flow assumption when computing cash flow unless taxes are considered. Our learning strategy involves a convenience store selling three bottles of water. Inventory flow, cash flow, and the calculations of cost of goods sold, income, and ending inventory are illustrated under the first-in, first-out method; the last-in, first-out method; the weighted-average method; and specific identification.

With the emergence of Toyota Production System, Inventory management has become an integral aspect and touches every facet of operations in a manufacturing organization. The purpose of inventory manage- ment is to ensure availability of materials in sufficient quantity as and when required and also to minimize investment in inventories. Higher the inventory holding period; higher will be the loss, risk and uncertainty to the company. Therefore a proper balance must be struck to maintain proper inventory with the minimum financial impact on the organization. A firm neglecting the management of inventories will be jeopardizing its long run profitability and may fail ultimately. The present study focuses on the inventory management practices followed at a major automotive firm in chennai by using various inventory management techniques.

Measuring the value of information sharing (VIS) in different inventory policies can help general contractor to improve materials and equipments management in construction supply chain. The models for measuring the VIS under (s, S) and Periodic Review (PR) inventory policies are established. A method to compare the VIS is given in a two-level construction supply chain, which aims to measure the impacts of supply quantity information of materials on general contractor's service level and total inventory cost under different inventory policies. A numerical example is proposed to explore the gap of VIS between (s, S) and PR inventory policies in a rebar supply chain. The results show that general contractor's service level in (s, S) inventory is higher than PR's and total inventory cost in (s, S) inventory is lower than PR's in the case of no information sharing. In the case of information sharing, general contractor's service level in PR inventory policy is higher than (s, S) policy; however, it is implemented by the increase of total inventory cost. This research provides valuable information to help general contractor to make correct decision on inventory management in supply chain at firm-level.

In recent years, there has been an increasing adoption of returns policies in the coordination of the supply chain, where market demand is always assumed to be satisfied by manufacturing or by ordering from suppliers. However, many industries face the important decision of how to balance their inventory level. This problem has long been studied in financial institutions such as banks. This study presents an optimal inventory policy under a given stochastic demand such as a uniformly distributed demand, single-item, and single period review inventory system. The optimal inventory control policy obtained in this study is called a four-point policy: that is, when the entity's inventory level is below a reorder point, the entity must increase his stock level by ordering and order up-to a fixed level (second point); when the entity's inventory level is over a return point (third point); the stock level must be decreased by returns and decreased to a fixed level (fourth point); otherwise, nothing should be done. We also analyze the (K, S)-convex properties of the inventory cost function.

Switzerland's National Forest Inventory – review and outlook (essay) The idea of carrying out a national forest inventory in Switzerland was first raised in the 1950s. It had become increasingly evident that such an inventory was lacking as a basis for evaluating the state of the forest in the whole country. But it was not until 1970 that this idea took concrete shape. And it took another ten years for the Swiss government to agree to the first inventory taking place. From the start, the National Forest Inventory (NFI) was a joint project of the Swiss federal administration and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. It has now established itself as an objective source of information about the Swiss forest. On the national level, it is today the most important instrument for monitoring the sustainability of the management of Swiss forests, and it yields the main data needed for international reports on forests. The success of the NFI is at least partly due to the fact that it has met with widespread support from both the Swiss authorities and scientists. The NFI has, over the past 30 years, continuously developed both methodologically and in terms of content. Thus the first NFI's data catalogue was expanded to include, for example, numerous ecological parameters. Currently the fourth NFI is underway. It will mark the transition from a periodic to a continuous inventory. In the future, the survey results will be published roughly every three years. Reducing the intervals between inventories will, however, be associated with higher estimation errors. On the other hand, interesting new applications can be expected in remote sensing, as well as improved models of future forest development. Some new methods seem promising, like the so-called “small area estimation”, which enables conclusions to be drawn about relatively small areas. However, if the NFI is to continue to perform its tasks adequately in future, it must receive sufficient funding.

Modern production planning and inventory control has been developed in order to treat more practical and more complicated circumstances, such as researching supply chain instead of single stock point; multi-items with correlation instead of single item and so on. In this paper, how to classify inventory items which are correlated each other is discussed by using the concept of 'cross-selling effect'. In history, the ABC classification is usually used for inventory items aggregation because the number of inventory items is so large that it is not computationally feasible to set stock and service control guidelines for each individual item. A fundamental principle in ABC classification is that ranking all inventory items with respect to a notion of profit based on historical transactions. The difficulty is that the profit of one item not only comes from its own sales, but also from its influence on the sales of other items or reverse, i.e., the 'cross-selling effect'. We had previously developed a classification approach for inventory items by using the association rules to deal with the 'cross-selling effect' and found that a very different classification can be obtained when comparing with traditional ABC classification. However, the 'cross-selling effect' may be considered in different ways. In this paper, a new consideration of inventory classification based on loss rule is presented. The lost profit of item/itemset with 'cross-selling effect' is discussed and defined as criterion for evaluating of importance of item, based on which new algorithms on classifying inventory items, also on discovering maximum profit item selection, are presented. A simple example is used to explain the new algorithm, and large amount of empirical experiments, both on real database collected from Japanese convenient store and on downloaded benchmark database, are implemented to evaluate the performances on effectiveness and utility. The results show that the proposed approach in this paper can gain a well insight into the cross-selling effect among items and is applicable for large-sized transaction database.

The US Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program collects information on trees in areas that meet its definition of forest. However, the inventory excludes trees in areas that do not meet this definition, such as those found in urban areas, in isolated patches, in areas with sparse or predominantly herbaceous vegetation, in narrow strips (e.g., shelterbelts), or in riparian areas. In the Great Plains States, little is known about the tree resource in these noninventoried, nonforest areas, and there is a great deal of concern about the potential impact of invasive pests, such as the emerald ash borer. To address this knowledge gap, FIA's National Inventory and Monitoring Applications Center has partnered with state cooperators and others in a project called the Great Plains Initiative to design and implement an inventory of trees in nonforest areas. The goal of the inventory is to characterize the nonforest tree resource using methods compatible with those of FIA so a holistic understanding of the resource can be obtained by integrating the two surveys. The goal of this paper is to describe the process of designing and implementing the survey, including plot and sample design, and to present some example results from a reporting tool we developed.

Purpose As impact assessment methods for water use in LCA evolve, so must inventory methods. Water categories that consider water quality must be defined within life cycle inventory. The method presented here aims to establish water categories by source, quality parameter and user.

Static game-theoretic models of bilateral bargaining assume that the seller knows his valuation for the item that is up for sale; that is, how the seller may determine this quantity is exogenous to these models. In this paper, we develop and analyze a stylized Markov decision process that endogenizes the seller's computation of his marginal inventory valuation in an infinite-horizon revenue management setting when each sale occurs according to a given bilateral bargaining mechanism. We use this model to compare, both analytically and numerically, the seller's performance under four basic bilateral bargaining mechanisms with a tractable information structure. These comparisons provide insights into the seller's performance under the following trading arrangements: buyer and seller posted pricing, negotiated pricing, and rule-based pricing.

Over the past 10 years, Procter & Gamble has leveraged its cross-functional organizational structure with operations research to reduce its inventory investment. Savings were achieved in a two-step process. First, spreadsheet-based inventory models locally optimized each stage in the supply chain. Because these were the first inventory tools installed, they achieved significant savings and established P&G's scientific inventory practices. Second, P&G's more complex supply chains implemented multiechelon inventory optimization software to minimize inventory costs across the end-to-end supply chain. In 2009, a tightly coordinated planner-led effort, supported by these tools, drove $1.5 billion in cash savings. Although case studies show the mathematics employed, of equal importance is the presentation of the planning process that facilitates inventory management and the decision tree that matches a business to the optimal inventory tool depending on the requirements of the business. Today, more than 90 percent of P&G's business units (about $70 billion in revenues) use either single-stage (70 percent) or multiechelon (30 percent) inventory management tools. Plans are underway to increase the use of multiechelon tools to manage 65 percent of P&G's supply chains in the next three years.

We study an extension of a two-period inventory management problem with positively correlated demands in which the manager's compensation is partially based on an external, market-based assessment of the firm's value. As typically the "real'' demand is only observed internally in the firm, the manager may ship more than the real demand to downstream customers and report higher than real sales revenues to influence the external firm valuation, which is known as "channel stuffing." As it is costly and does not reflect the real demand, channel stuffing destroys the firm's value. We identify three factors that drive the manager's incentives for channel stuffing: the marginal effect, the boundary effect and the carryover effect. The marginal effect, analogous to those earnings management incentives revealed in the literature (e.g., Stein 1989), is independent of the inventory problem, while the boundary and carryover effects arise from the nature of the inventory problem. The boundary effect occurs when the real demand realization is high, but, still less than the available inventory: reporting a "sold out" situation censors the upper tail of the demand distribution, and hence, leads to an increase in market valuation that the manager would like to cash in with channel stuffing. The carryover effect occurs when the real demand realization is low. In this scenario, channel stuffing would make the firm's future performance look more rosy because of positively correlated future demand and high future sales margin as the firm will be able to satisfy the future demand from the large current inventory. When examining the initial inventory decision, we find that under rational market valuation, both over- and under-investment may arise in presence of channel stuffing incentives. Based on our model analysis, we derive empirically testable hypotheses for channel stuffing.

This paper describes the use of item dwell-time measurement in the context of capital investment projects. It contributes to the research on product-centric control and intelligent products by empirically demonstrating the value of item dwell-time alerts in the context of project delivery. The paper shows how item dwell-time measurement can be implemented in the field, and compares item dwell-time alerts to conventional measures of inventory turnover and inventory value in four telecommunications infrastructure projects. We find that when individual items cannot be used interchangeably at project sites, conventional inventory measures do not provide sufficiently timely and accurate information about emerging problems in project inventories. These findings are especially important in situations in which supply chain managers can find alternative uses for materials at other sites or in other projects. Timely reallocation of materials prevents the accumulation of slow-moving items that weigh on project performance by increasing obsolescence and inventory holding costs.

For efficient maintenance management of bridges, an establishment of asset management system is necessary which helps prediction of maintenance cost and strategic allocation of budget in consideration of top priority. The main purpose of this study is to suggest asset valuation method, which is practical in conformity with domestic situations, through researches on asset valuation method of bridges. This study has researched asset valuation method of bridge, which is appropriate for domestic situations by finding out advantages and disadvantages through investigating domestic and foreign application examples of asset valuation method for bridge facilities. In this study, asset valuation method by historical cost and replacement cost were suggested and a valuation model for bridges was established. In addition, two suggested valuation methods were applied to actual bridges which is used in Korea. As the result, it was analyzed that bridge asset valuation method in consideration of historical cost is desirable for the accounting purpose. And, it was analyzed that valuation method utilizing depreciated replacement cost(DRC), which could consider various factors, is desirable for the maintenance decision supporting purpose.

Achieving uninterrupted production, increasing profitability and productivity, protection against stock-outs, and improving customer service levels have been the major benefits of holding inventory. Maintaining inventory levels beyond a certain limit is, however, an undesirable phenomenon. While practitioners and researchers are aiming at minimum possible cost of inventory, many small business owners in India still fail to appreciate fully the true costs of carrying inventory. In this context the present study examines a case of the lock manufacturing industry in the Aligarh district of the state Uttar Pradesh. The investigations reveal that lock manufacturing units, by-and-large, are either unaware of even the fundamental techniques of inventory management or do not practice them for one reason or the other. The case attempts to illustrate how SMEs can reduce their inventory costs, and hence improve profitability, through the application of basic models of inventory management.

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.

This paper studies a periodic review dynamic pricing and inventory control problem with fixed ordering cost included. Demand is uncertain and price-sensitive in a general form. At the end of each period, all unmet demand is lost. We focus on the optimization and optimality of an (s, S, p)-type policy, which operates as follows: whenever the inventory level is less than or equal to s, an order is placed to order-up-to level S; when the inventory level is larger than s, no order is issued; the price p is specified by the inventory level. We further numerically investigate the optimal solutions and their sensitivity to cost parameters and demand uncertainty.

UD Surabaya Rattan Industry as the middle scale of company is produced rattan chairs. This company is based on the job order to plan and develop the future company to its business strategy become mass production. In process production, the company always faces problems in the row material supply. If the row material supply is saved in long time period and there is bulking in storage it can make the rattans will be under level quality. The purpose of this research is giving information about the choosing methods of planning, controlling the row material supply with differ between Just in Time (JIT) method with Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) to minimize inventory value. The result of from chosen method for the planning of inventory control of raw material. Total Inventory Cost (TIC) which in it there are three element of it expense of that is expense of purchasing, expense of ordering, and also stock holding cost got TIC for the Method of Just in Time (JIT) period 13 to Rp233.129.629,71. While for the Method of Economic Order of Quantity (EOQ) at period 13 to Rp234,171,969.21. Calculation of Total Inventory Cost (TIC) as a whole ( period of time 1 year) by applying Method of Just In Time ( JIT) it can be seen Totalize Inventory Cost (TIC) Rp5,012,483,943.59 while by applying Economic Order of Quantity (EOQ) from Total of Inventory Cost (TIC) Rp518,088,399.86. Becoming method planning of inventory control the selected method of Just In Time (JIT) with thrift equal to Rp5,604,456.27.

The purpose of this study is to develop a method for evaluating the cost effectiveness of medical device technologies by examining the classification of medical device operating expenses and structures of clinical engineering departments. Therefore, the cost efficiency of medical device technologies were analyzed by evaluating the medical equipment operating expenses of the health facilities connected to the Istanbul Beyoglu Public Hospitals Union (IBPHU) by using the normalized weighted arithmetic average method. While medical device operating expenses are evaluated, the relation between the total inventory value and technological development levels of the inventory device groups is used. IBPHU’s data on medical device operating expenses for 2015 were obtained by the Ministry of Health Business Intelligence and Uniform Accounting Systems that were compared with calculated results by developed method. Medical device inventory are classified as high, medium, low and simple technology which are based on technological development level. The ratio of acquisition costs of technology device groups to total inventory acquisition costs were obtained as 40,08%, 29,14%, 22,62% and 8,16%, respectively. By using literature and our study’s methodology, the upper limit of the annual cost effectiveness ratio in medical device operation costs was obtained, which is 10.41% of total inventory acquisition value. The annual ratio of the total value of biomedical service and spare parts expenditures to the inventory value in the health facilities connected to the IBPHU was calculated as 6.74%. According to the results, the IBPHU’s operational cost of medical device technologies of was observed to be within effective cost limits for 2015. It is thought that this method will be one of the criteria that will benefit to health technology managers in evaluating the effectiveness of clinical engineering departments.

Spare part management is one of the most important work for enterprises, especially for manufacturing enterprises; however, the spare part management problems trouble enterprise operators a lot. In this article, implementation methods of lean spare parts management are illuminated. Spare parts purchase process is declared to reduce the purchasing cost and inventory value. We had established a suitable lean spare parts inventory management model for consumable parts, wear parts, insurance parts and accident parts. In addition, methods of lean spare parts management had been created base on optimized supply chain, ERP and integrating repeated material inventory. We used SAP-iPro system and self-developed system to manage spare parts, so that warehouse management process, spare parts purchase process and maintenance process are standardized. According to theory analysis and practice, the remarkable economic benefit is created for enterprise by the means of optimizing spare parts distribution, standardizing and scientific spare parts management.

Inventory management is a major area of study in the field of production management, and applications often result in major efficiency gains and service level improvements. Economists believe that inventory levels play a pivotal role in the onset of economic recessions. Nevertheless, financial theories have given only cursory attention to inventory factors. The goal of this research is to apply tools of financial economics to address basic issues in inventory management. A capital asset pricing model is developed and applied to determine lot size and reorder points from minimizing present value of total cost subject to risk adjusted discount rates.

The tendency to rely on accounting earnings as the primary metric of corporate performance has been subject to criticism in recent times. A key concern is that earnings misrepresent changes in value in that cash outlays occur upfront but expenses are recognized only over time. While recognized expenses indeed add up to the initial cash outflow, the equality holds only in undiscounted (nominal), not discounted (real), terms. Accordingly, corporate earnings figures suffer from a form of money illusion. In this paper, we demonstrate that such money illusion can have an upside when it is present in vertical relationships subject to self-interest. In particular, a buyer who focuses on earnings has incentives to increase purchases since it does not immediately encounter the full cost of cash outflows. These added incentives can promote more efficient trade. We also show that the increased incentives to buy can also lead to Pareto improvements by spurring the supplier to invest more in developing technology. Finally, we demonstrate that judiciously chosen inventory valuation rules can lead to efficient supply chain outcomes. Thus, efficiency can be achieved when supply chain parties freely trade and regulators specify only the accounting rules under which they operate.

The relationship between the conservation of plant genetic resources and their culture history is intimate. Consequently, biodiversity research must also take into account historical and cultural factors. An inventory of plants collected from all over Sweden was made with the aim of establishing a national Swedish gene bank for once cultivated hop. Only female hop, which could be regarded as cultivated hop on the basis of history, were selected. In this study, two different inventory methods were used: one based on plant habitat and the other involving the use of historical documents, primarily large-scale maps from the first half of the seventeenth century, used to locate their cultivars today. The documented history of the hop, combined with its biology, is the basis for the methods used. Hop is the only Swedish crop that according to a 1442 law had to be cultivated. The law lasted for over 400 years. Since the hop is a perennial, dioecious plant and only female individuals are cultivated, over time very few genetic recombination events are expected. Today, it is possible to connect and identify living plants using historical documents. The degree of connection between today’s living plants and the historical evidence for hop cultivation differ between the two methods.

Although inventory reduction has been a major topic in production and operations management research for many years, there is a lack of empirically confirmed answers for questions such as: Have inventories in fully industrialized economies such as Germany decreased, overall, during the past decades? To the extent, inventory reductions were successfully realized, in which industries did they occur? Are there differences in inventory reduction achievements between raw materials, work-in-process, or finished goods? Are there measurable effects of inventory reductions upon the financial performance? To the best of our knowledge, this empirical study is the first one to investigate long-term inventory development on a firm as well as on industry level in a major European economy. It is based on data from German corporations and provides answers to the research questions stated above. The study’s findings indicate that total inventory to sales ratio decreased in a statistically significant extent in four out of six industry sectors during the time frame investigated. Further results suggest that the overall impact of inventory reductions to the financial performance of companies is only of a small degree.

Developments in the field of remote sensing have led to various cost-efficient forest inventory methods at different levels of detail. Remote-sensing techniques such as airborne laser scanning (ALS) and digital photogrammetry are becoming feasible alternatives for providing data for forest planning. Forest-planning systems are used to determine the future harvests and silvicultural operations. Input data errors affect the forest growth projections and these effects are dependent on the magnitude of the error. Our objective in this study was to determine how the errors typical to different inventory methods affect forest growth projections at individual stand level during a planning period of 30 years. Another objective was to examine how the errors in input data behave when different types of growth simulators are used. The inventory methods we compared in this study were stand-wise field inventory and single-tree ALS. To study the differences between growth models, we compared two forest simulators consisting of either distance-independent tree-level models or stand-level models. The data in this study covered a 2,000-ha forest area in southern Finland, including 240 sample plots with individually measured trees. The analysis was conducted with Monte Carlo simulations. The results show that the tree-level simulator is less sensitive to errors in the input data and that by using single-tree ALS data, more precise growth projections can be obtained than using stand-wise field inventory data.

The aim of this research is to find the influence of inventory cost flow methods, inventory value, inventory turnover and gross profit margin to the company market value. The research data was gathered from the annually financial report 72 manufacturer companies that were sampled listed on Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) within the period of 2003 - 2006. Out of the 72 manufacturer companies, 21 companies implemented the FIFO inventory cost flow method and 51 companies implemented the average inventory cost flow method. These samples were chooses by applying the purposed sampling method and pooling data. The analysis was calculated by using normalization data test, classic assumption test consists of autocorrelation, heterocedacity and multicolinearitas. Afterwards, hypothesis test was measured by utilizing the multiple regression test followed with t test and F test also independents t test act as a support for hypothesis test. The result of this research shows that as collectively the inventory cost flow methods, inventory value, inventory turnover and gross profit margin significantly affected the market value. Other while, the variables were inventory cost flow methods, inventory turnover and gross profit margin had a less impact to the market value.

SUMMARY: This paper investigates the effect of different mood states—specifically positive, neutral, and negative mood—on inventory valuation decisions. Psychological research suggests that different mood states can lead to different professional judgments in the performance of an ambiguous task. Compared with neutral- and negative-mood individuals, positive-mood individuals have the lowest consensus and make the least conservative judgment (i.e., the highest inventory valuation), and negative-mood individuals have the highest consensus and make the most conservative judgment (i.e., the lowest inventory valuation). An experiment conducted with 102 Australian audit professionals found that, consistent with the literature, mood states affect the dispersion and extent of conservatism in the inventory valuation judgment. A follow-up experiment conducted with 170 final-year Australian auditing students suggests that the effect of moods on judgment may be due to the mood-congruent retrieval of information by the participants. Implications for practice and research are also provided.

In a recent paper, Alfares [2007. Inventory model with stock-level dependent demand rate and variable holding cost. International Journal of Production Economics, 108 (1–2), 259–265] presented an inventory model with a stock-dependent demand rate and variable holding costs. The analysis imposed a terminal condition that the inventory level at the end of the order cycle drop to zero and utilized a cost-minimization objective. However, with a stock-dependent demand rate, this approach does not provide an optimal profit. Allowing ending inventory to be nonzero, a profit-maximization model and solution methodology are developed. Computational results indicate a substantial improvement in the solution realized by the proposed approach.

In retailing, inventory analysis and inventory practice have traditionally been based on the assumption that underlying demand does not vary with inventory levels. A growing body of research supports the contention that the validity of this assumption has significant implications for optimal inventory policies. The concern for such inventory effects motivated a major US magazine publisher to conduct the market study documented in this article. It presents empirical evidence that demand can indeed vary with inventory, and it quantifies the magnitude of these inventory effects which are twofold. An inventory decrease for one brand can, first, result in a decrease of demand for the brand and, second, in an increase of demand for a competing brand. These observations support the expansion of the traditional Newsvendor model to include inventory effects as well as the practice to make inventory decisions for retail categories rather than individual brands.

In this paper, we extend the models in the literature [Lee, H.L., So, K.C., Tang, C., 2000. The value of information sharing in a two-level supply chain. Management Science 46 (5), 626–643; Raghunathan, S., Yeh, A.B., 2001. Beyond EDI: impact of continuous replenishment program (CRP) between a manufacturer and its retailers. Information Systems Research 12 (4), 406–419] to analyze the benefits realized for manufacturers and retailers under information sharing (IS), continuous replenishment programs (CRP) or vendor managed inventory (VMI) and compare the distribution of benefits between manufacturers and retailers. Our analysis shows that IS, CRP, and VMI bring varying benefits in terms of inventory cost savings to firms, and that the benefits are not consistently distributed between retailers and manufacturers. Our findings also point to the managerial implications on how managers may decide the product sets and replenishment frequency for improved benefit realization under CRP and VMI.

Inventory record inaccuracy is a significant problem for retailers using automated inventory management systems. In this paper, we consider an intelligent inventory management tool that accounts for record inaccuracy using a Bayesian belief of the physical inventory level. We assume that excess demands are lost and unobserved, in which case sales data reveal information about physical inventory levels. We show that a probability distribution on physical inventory levels is a sufficient summary of past sales and replenishment observations, and that this probability distribution can be efficiently updated in a Bayesian fashion as observations are accumulated. We also demonstrate the use of this distribution as the basis for practical replenishment and inventory audit policies and illustrate how the needed parameters can be estimated using data from a large national retailer. Our replenishment policies avoid the problem of “freezing,” in which a physical inventory position persists at zero while the corresponding record is positive. In addition, simulation studies show that our replenishment policies recoup much of the cost of inventory record inaccuracy, and that our audit policy significantly outperforms the popular “zero balance walk” audit policy.