Reducing Wastage in Inventory Management By Lean Management

Abstract

Companies nowadays are working to improve their processes and functions; one of the most important functions is inventory management, in which companies schedule their production activity. This function has evolved and come up with many optimization tools that, unfortunately, many companies haven’t adopted yet. Also, the lean management concept has largely attracted the attention of both researchers and professionals regarding its importance in improving the business process and reducing waste. The main aim of this study is to improve the function of inventory management in a company which is specialized in the production of pipes, in the context of a lean management approach. The adoption of this system allows for the detection of all sources of waste in this function through the use of a set of tools to identify and reduce waste such as ASLOG reference, ABC analysis, Brainstorming, Pareto’s diagram, Ishikawa model. The use of these tools have allowed the detection of the main sources of waste to eliminate them and improve this important function to achieve a high level of firm performance. To collect data, an interview, observation, and analysis of a set of documents were relied upon. This study relied on the IMRAD methodology in the divisions of the study, and the most famous models (IMC) related to choosing the appropriate solution from a group of alternatives were used at any strategic level in the company. This model was applied to address the problem of the study, and when we followed the stages of the model and applied a set of techniques in the Inventory management function the most important problems in this function were discovered, which is a waste of both time and cost. These problems were also discussed by proposing a set of solutions and adapting them to the company under study.