Volume management
Inventory management in an independent demand context

Given that not all stocks are of the same nature, there's no reason to manage them all in the same way. Obviously, a multitude of criteria come into play when deciding how to manage inventory:

• mass ;

• volume ;

• clutter ;

• the cost...

Among these, cost is a key criterion.

However, today's production management methods using just-in-time techniques have led to the emergence of other criteria, such as the "degree of commonality of items"; we'll deal with this point in a special section on the management of "shortages" (see §