Stock functions
Inventory management in an independent demand context

Inventories create one or more breaking points in the flow of materials between the supply of raw materials and delivery to the customer. They act as a buffer between the constitution of finished products and customer delivery, between the requirements of a workload item and the output of the previous workload item...

Inventory can therefore be classified according to different functions.

• Anticipation stock

  Anticipatory stock is used whenever we want to anticipate future demand. This is systematically the case when the lead time is longer than the lead time expected by the customer (figure 2); in this case, forecasts are used.

• Fluctuation stock

  This stock is created to cover variability in demand or lead time. If demand or delivery times are greater than forecast,...