The purpose of this paper is to systematically describe the key practical contributions of the theory of constraints (TOC) to outbound (distribution) logistics.
Recently there has been a proliferation of interest in the topic of total supply chain management. This interest has prompted many companies in the fast moving consumer goods sector to review their inventory policies and, in particular, levels of finished stock. Responsibility for finished stock often falls between production and distribution leaving it rather like a “piggy in the middle”…
With all the hype around efficient consumer response (ECR) and the brave new world of technologies, one would believe that retail out‐of‐stocks have gone down over the last ten years. That is wrong. Retailers have been struggling with considerable out‐of‐stocks for decades – with little evidence of improvement. A similar wrong belief is that shoppers are also still unwilling to acce…
Service parts are needed for maintenance of industrial systems as well as for consumer products. Their logistics has an inherent difficulty: common models for inventory management are invalid, as the demand process is different and demand data scarce. The paper discusses experiences gained in case studies of practical stock control techniques. New concepts aimed to reduce the problem of slow mo…