Inventory management is primarily about specifying the size and placement of stocked goods. Inventory management is required at different locations within a facility or within multiple locations of a supply network to protect the regular and planned course of production against the random disturbance of running out of materials or goods. The scope of inventory management also concerns the fine lines between replenishment lead time, carrying costs of inventory, asset management, inventory forecasting, inventory valuation, inventory visibility, future inventory price forecasting, physical inventory, available physical space for inventory, quality management, replenishment, returns and defective goods and demand forecasting. Balancing these competing requirements leads to optimal inventory levels, which is an on-going process as the business needs shift and react to the wider environment. Inventory management involves a retailer seeking to acquire and maintain a proper merchandise assortment while ordering, shipping, handling, and related costs are kept in check. Systems and processes that identify inventory requirements, set targets, provide replenishment techniques and report actual and projected inventory status. Handles all functions related to the tracking and management of material. This would include the monitoring of material moved into and out of stockroom locations and the reconciling of the inventory balances. Also may include ABC analysis, lot tracking, cycle counting support etc. Management of the inventories, with the primary objective of determining/controlling stock levels within the physical distribution function to balance the need for product availability against the need for minimizing stock holding and handling costs.

MRP - Material Requirement Planning can be applied even by very small manufacturing companies to assure a smooth flow of product. The primary control focus of an MRP system is Order Entry. Once an order is entered, all the manufacturing functions are put into motion. These include:

• Cost Estimates - a function of Order Entry. Cost builds can be ordered from information in the other modules.
• Order Entry - where the demand originates. Orders may be scheduled for periodic builds.
• Inventory Control - do we have any of this stuff already built? How much?
• Bill of Materials - what parts are needed to produce the product. BOM provides a complete multi-level build "blow down".
• Purchasing - what parts called for by the BOM are in stock and which ones do we have to buy, and when do they have to be here.
• Manufacturing Floor Control and Scheduling. Controlling allocation of personnel and resources.
• Invoicing - where an order is transformed into an Invoice and shipping documents. Partial shipments and periodic shipments are allowed for, and will draw down the order quantity.

Harinya developed the Inventory Warehouse & Material Requirements Planning (MRP) system which contains a work order system that will direct the use of bill of materials system to build inventory and add it to the system. The system contains all of the fields and tables necessary to build a complete MRP System of our own, including Purchase Contract Tables and the ability to easily add on a production planning system.