Supply chain cyber security is a growing concern for many businesses – unsurprising, given the increasing number of digital breaches that make the news. Recent examples include the DarkSide cyber attack of Colonial Pipeline in May 2021, which was only resolved once the hackers were paid $5 million in ransom....Read more

Managing many thousands of stocked items, provided by a network of suppliers and sent out to an extensive customer base is a difficult task. To help control such complexity, businesses can introduce models to discriminate between different stock items. They can then apply a level of control to each group,...Read more

Chinese New Year might seem like a long way off, but smart inventory managers will be starting to plan for this event very soon. The more prepared you are, the greater your ability to ensure that this annual supplier shutdown causes as little disruption as possible. In this post we...Read more

ABC classification is used by inventory management teams to help identify the most important stock items in their portfolio and ensure they focus on managing them above those less valuable. Using ABC classification, inventory is divided into three categories, A (most important), B (fairly important) and C (least important). An...Read more

In its simplest form, a bill of materials (BOM) is a list of components, parts or materials required to manufacture, assemble or repair a product. A BOM is often hierarchical, with the finished product at the top and sub-items below. In inventory management a BOM is critical to ensure the...Read more

Inventory demand forecasting is the process of predicting demand for an inventory item over a defined period of time. Usually this involves reviewing historical data e.g past consumption or sales data and using knowledge of market fluctuations and trends to forecast the future values. A combination of known and forecasted...Read more