When it comes to inventory control how will putting its factory floor on-line benefit an organization?

Essay by Wolfgang61University, Master'sA+, February 2005

download word file, 5 pages 5.0

The Internet and information technology (IT) has benefited greatly the process of the supply chain management, but every echelon of the supply chain must be connected to each other and working at the same speed. In every supply chain, the weakest link in the chain will define the speed of the entire system. For the majority of manufacturers, the plant floor is the weakest link in their supply chains, yet that is where they're apt to find the biggest payoff from e-manufacturing.

In today's business world, enterprises strive to be lean by maintaining low inventory to avoid unnecessary costs in inventory management and storage.

When it comes to inventory control the Internet plays an innovative and productive part in the factory floor of an organization. Maintaining a constant awareness of real-time data of the supply chain will help the factory floor inventory managers to maintain the proper level of inventory thus minimizing inventory related costs.

This paper discusses the benefits of connecting an organization's factory floor in the Internet in relation to inventory control. It also details the actions that, in accordance to experts, should be taken into consideration when dealing with IT and the Internet to maximize those benefits. This paper will provide facts and opinions from different reports and write-ups from subject matter experts, professional journals, and other documents.

Inventory results from at least one of two conditions, says Kevin Prouty, research director at AMR Research (Boston, MA). "Ignorance equals inventory. Or variability equals inventory," (Even the leanest of automotive manufacturing operations, namely Toyota, keeps inventory, he adds.) In the first condition, if the organization doesn't know what's going on upstream or downstream, the organization must keep inventory on hand. In the second condition, the organization may have all the inventory in the world, yet they still might...