It is one thing to be able to measure current levels of customer service and inventory levels, albeit the former can be quite difficult in itself, but it is quite another thing to set targets for these indicators. Traditionally they are in conflict with each other. Insisting upon improved customer service from one manager, while insisting upon reducing inventory with another can often lead to disharmony in the management team.

Pull together

If your company takes on collective responsibility for achieving targets, there is the question of what the targets should be, What inventory level should be set to support a given level of customer service? What about the additional complication of differing product groups that require different levels of customer service? Commodities easily available from competitors might be dealt with in a different way to niche or specialised products.

sales.jpgThen there is the question of the quality of the sales forecast and how relevant the forecast is to actual sales, in terms of trends, seasonality and the positioning of the product in relation to its life cycle. With our sophisticated software tools, simulations can be run to check the consequence of changing service levels, lead times or re-order quantities on inventory levels in real quantitative terms.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are particularly inept in this area. We can offer ERP enhancement solutions to all these issues in a simple and easily monitored way.

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