Supply Chain Tasks

5063 Week 9 Please send by 8pm Saturday March 10, 2018

Discussion 11

Class, From the reading and materials, pick out 2 things that struck you and tell us why this struck you and how it will add value to your workplace?

Daman, I have learned a few lessons from the material up to this point in the course. Things that have really stood out were the inventory management and forecasting. I have also learned a great deal about lead-time and how it can help a firm conduct its forecasting. According to Axsater, the lead-time is the time from the ordering decision until the ordered amount is available on the shelf. It is not only the transit time from an external supplier or the production time in case of an internal order. It also includes, for example, order preparation time, transit time for the order, administrative time at the supplier, and time for inspection after receiving the order (Axsater 2015). Using this lesson correctly would work well in my current employment as well to ensure that the supplies that are needed by a vast number of customers can be delivered to them by reducing the lead-time as much as possible.

Second thing that has stood out to me from the course material is the inventory control system and in particular the continuous monitored inventory control system. According to Axsater, an inventory control system can be designed so that the inventory position is monitored continuously. As soon as the inventory position is sufficiently low, an order is triggered. We denote this as a continuous review (Axsater 2016). This would be useful to my firm as well because we can design a system that would enable my firm to automatically order the supplies it needs to run efficiently and meet all of our customer’s demands.

References:

Axsater, S. (2015). Inventory Control (Third ed.). Switzerland: Springer International Publication.

Jason, One area that stuck out to me from the past lessons was the different ways asset demands are determined. An example of this is the demand forecasting for seasonal items. Such a model is usually only used for a few items with very clear seasonal variations like Christmas decorations (Axsater, 2015). Even though this is often used for Holidays during the year the seasonal method is used in a slightly different way for the Air Force. It is based on the seasonal weather change. An example of how the weather change affects inventory is when the winter months hit the northern bases have to put deicing fluid on the aircraft. This is done in the same way as the civilian aircraft. In my workplace we are responsible for storing this fluid so in the fall we have to increase the demand level to ensure the proper amount is on hand.

Another area that stuck out from the reading was lateral transshipments. In emergency situations it is possible to use lateral transshipments between adjacent retailers (Axsater, 2015). In the Air Force we use the same type of system which is referred to as lateral shipments. This is shipping an asset from one base to another. The reason it is similar to adjacent retailers is because the mission of each base transporting the items is the same. Normally parts are requisitioned from the depot or a distribution center if there are not any in the bases warehouse but if no depot has the item in stock the Enterprise Solution Supply (ESS) system will search other bases and ship from there.

Reference:

Axsater, S. (2015). Inventory Control. Lund: Springer International Publishing.