Warehouse and Inventory Management: Types, Costs, and Strategies
Warehouse and Inventory Management
Storage Types
- Workshop: Suitable for subsistence and storing items most useful in the workshop.
- Official Service: In addition to consumption, this store is for foreign sale of spare parts.
- Parts: A company specifically dedicated to supplying spare parts for clients and workshops, without its own workshop.
- Manufacturer: Corresponds to products made by vehicle or component manufacturers.
- Recambista: Supplying spare parts to government departments or warehouses.
Level of sales (Vi) is the monthly amount of items sold for each product.
Costs of Storage and Warehouse Management
- Acquisition Cost: Costs due to product demand and transportation from our supplier’s warehouse to ours.
- Storage Cost: Costs associated with having a facility to house the product.
- Ownership Costs: The cost of acquiring stock, considered an expense until recovered through sales.
- Management Cost: Personnel costs necessary for the day-to-day management of the warehouse.
- Cost of Failure: Intangible costs incurred when a sale is lost due to not having a product in stock, potentially sending the client to another provider.
Stock rotation (Rot) is calculated as: Rot = VI / St (where VI = volume of product sales, and St = quantity of product in store). Rotation indicates how many times the stored quantity of a product is sold within a period.
- Minimum Order: The minimum quantity of a product that our supplier requires for an order.
- Deadline (E): The time it takes for ordered items to arrive at our store.
- Turnover: The influence of consumer products that may interest others, rotating faster than average or normal consumption.
- Price of the Product: It may be advantageous to have a small quantity of a very high-priced product.
- Energy-Efficient Products: A product with very low turnover may still be of interest due to low consumption, preventing lost sales.
Warehouse Management
Refers to the physical handling of products.
- Control Inputs: Verifying that products arriving at the store comply with orders.
- Product Placement: Placing received items in established warehouse positions.
- Broadcast Orders: Providing products demanded by customers.
- Inventory: The physical count of each product in the warehouse.
Inventory Management
Refers to defining all functions that affect warehouse activity.
- Negotiating with Suppliers: Searching for products and suppliers to determine price, quality, and other conditions.
- Setting Stock Levels: Determining the quantity of each item to keep in the warehouse.
- Determine Procurement Systems: Establishing policies for order placement.
- Inventory Management: Checking for discrepancies between theoretical and actual inventory.
- Analysis of Profitability: Calculating parameters to meet earnings and profitability of warehouse investments.