This study examined production and inventory control systems used in manufacturing industries in the United States in the 1990s. Largely, thus, this study focused on inventory management. Inventory management is concerned with the planning, organization, and control of materials inventory, production, stocking, and distribution.1 In the 1990s, both the economic and industrial environments are dynamic. Thus, materials management practices and procedures, together with the attendant production and inventory systems, must be capable of supporting effective decision making in these dynamic environments.
The growing internationalization of business activity further complicates the process of materials management, in terms of (1) developing accurate and timely data on production and stocking levels, (2) developing and projecting accurate and timely data on material and product requirements, and (3) incorporating a wide variety of multinational and international economic data into materials management activities. The growing internationalization of business activity has been accompanied by the introduction of high technology (high tech) procedures into manufacturing processes. Internationalization plus high tech manufacturing imposes additional urgency and requirements on the production and inventory control systems used in manufacturing.
1J. F. Magee, and D. M. Boodman, Production Planning and Inventory Control, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1990), 10. Inventories: Concepts and Definition
The American Production and Inventory Control Society defines inventories as stock keeping items, held at stocking points, and serving to decouple successive operations in a manufacturing or distribution process.2 Inventories are also defined in an accounting context, as "the aggregate of those items of personal property which are: (1) held for sale in the ordinary course of business; (2) in the process of production fo...