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Case Study Of Harley Davidson Inventory Management

Good Essays

Inventory

Inventory is the goods that a business has on its premises or on consignment. The essential role of inventory is to act as a buffer, allowing for the smooth functioning of the production and order fulfillment processes.

Inventory Control

Inventory control is the processes employed to maximize a company's use of inventory. The goal of inventory control is to generate the maximum profit from the least amount of inventory investment without intruding upon customer satisfaction levels.

Two fundamental decisions that one has to make when controlling inventory:

How large should an inventory replenishment order be? When should an inventory replenishment order be placed?

The objectives of inventory management often reduce the …show more content…

Results of Harley Davidson’s JIT Implementation:

Inventory levels decreased 75 percent. Increased productivity.

Harley Davidson’s success with the implementation of JIT had a lot to do with the fact that when JIT was put into practice, process problems could no longer be hidden by costly inventory that helped to meet ship dates. The inefficiencies in the processes were quickly identified and solved.

Safety Stock

Safety stock refers to an additional amount of stock carried over the normal stocking level requirements as a buffer against uncertainty. Some reasons for using safety stock as an inventory control method include supplier performance problems, long lead times and material uncertainty. For the small business that works on a very tight budget, carrying additional inventory in the form of safety stock may do more harm financially than the benefits gained from carrying the inventory. …show more content…

e.g. Queue formation in Temple. Disciples will follow a single queue to reach the sanctum sanctorum and have view of the lord.

M/M/s queuing system

It’s where a single queue can have one more parallel servers.

e.g. Queues formation in airports for check in. Passengers stand in single queue and are served by number of service desks.

Queues formation in banks in. Customers are given tokens in a single queue and are served by number of service desks.

M/M/s/N queuing system

It is similar to M/M/s system, but here the total capacity of the system is limited to N. If a customer arrives after the critical capacity N is reached, He/She can no longer be accommodated and will be rejected by the system. It is a more realistic model than the above.

e.g. Transportation service provided by buses/other vehicles are good example of this model. There will fixed no of fleets operating in a route and there can be infinite number of passengers. Passengers can get into any vehicle plying in that route. Since the no of passengers to be serviced is limited by the no of seats available across the vehicles, beyond a point passengers can’t travel in that route for that day and they be turned

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