ABC and VED analysis in medical stores inventory control

Abstract

Dear Editor, I wish to congratulate the principal author of the original article “ABC and VED Analysis in Medical Stores Inventory Control” for utilizing material management techniques for stores management, which is the need of the hour in the face of increasing demand: resource mismatch. A further improvement on the technique utilised in the study could have been multi-unit selective inventory control-three dimensional approach (MUSIC-3D) technique, which utilizes the criteria of annual usage value, availability and criticality. With increasing use of automation in stores management, this technique can be easily applied to the medical stores of service hospitals. I wish the author had drawn up a “Drug Formulary” of the hospital first, before applying the inventory control techniques, else changing prescribing habits of different physicians may nullify all the advantages gained and PVMS Sec 01 is probably too large in scope to control effectively. At 179 Military Hospital, similar inventory control techniques have been utilised with added calculation of Safety stock and Re-order level, using automation, which has given the medical store of the hospital the confidence of almost zero stockouts throughout the year. I will appeal to all the service hospitals to embrace modern inventory control techniques for medical store management for ensuring optimal utilization of available resources.