This thesis focuses on the study and optimization of inventory management in company XXX Ltd. The theoretical part is dedicated to characteristic of basic concepts related to inventory management, their classification, related costs and inventory management methods. Practical part is focused on the analysis of the current state in the company, on providing, storage and controlling of inventory. This analysis reveals deficiencies for which several solutions will be suggested. They will lead to more effective inventory management in the company.

I dagsläget tas enbart hänsyn till variation i geometri. Detta leder till att moduler som levereras inom kort befinner sig längst ner i högen. Projektet handlar om att göra en nulägesbeskrivning och analys för att hitta slöserier samt en studie över hur en lageryta ska formas för att utnyttjas maximalt.  Teori i form av kurslitteraturen i och vetenskapliga artiklar har tillämpats i rapporten. Teorin omfattar lagerstyrning och lagerutformning för ena frågeställningen och lean för den andra frågeställningen. Datainsamlingen har gjort med hjälp av en kvalitativ metod, då personalen har intervjuats. Med hjälp av teorin har förbättringsförslag för företaget tagits fram. Svar på de två olika frågeställningarna har framställts. Företaget har många faktorer som resulterar i en ineffektiv modulhantering och det som påverkar mest är informationsflödet. Företaget uppmuntras till att utnyttja lagerpersonalens kompetens och förbättra informationsflödet. / The report is an analysis of the current situation at the warehouse at the company Vossloh nordic switch systems in Örebro. Vossloh Nordic Switch Systems manufactures prefabricated switches for the railway industry. The switches consist of two to three modules weighing between 6 to 25 tons depending on the type of module. In accordance with the customer contract, Vossloh produces and stores the switches until the customer wants them to be delivered, this leads to the switches spending a long time in the warehouse. Since switches cannot be installed during the colder period out in the field, the company has high and low seasons regarding deliveries of switches. The company has an internal goal to even out the finished goods inventory and believes that free stacking of the switches leads to safety risks. The free stacked modules are in a random order and this leads to many unnecessary lifts, from which the staff collects from the module piles. Due to inadequate information flow, the various factors for the modules are not taken into account. The company has four factors that result in the modules lying here wildly.

Inventories totaling 1.7 trillion U.S. dollars represent an opportunity for U.S. manufacturers. This exploratory case study researched supply chain strategies used to manage inventory in manufacturing operations of a U.S. manufacturing company. A mature value chain contained within a single organization using the value chain framework was the basis for this study. Individual interviews conducted with 16 managers responsible for defining and implementing inventory control strategies, and 4 internal users provided primary information for the study. Other sources of information included a value chain map created through the observation of operations, various inventory measurements, and policies and guidelines related to managing inventory levels. An inductive content analysis employing zero-level coding of the interview transcripts identified 4 themes that describe inventory control strategies as economic order quantity, kanban, vendor managed inventory, and process integration. Physical observation of the value chain, review of supporting documents, and analysis of inventory data ensured the trustworthiness of interpreted themes. Findings identified no single inventory control strategy that fit all applications. Findings also revealed that the financial governing bodies' measurements were not the best tools for operational managers' improvement activities related to inventory control. Included are measures providing alternative means to gauge inventory efficiency. With the results of this study, managers may develop effective strategies to optimize inventory and improve material flow. Manufacturing managers improving material flow may promote sustainability of raw materials and business efficiencies through reduced waste, improved environmental conditions, and increased employment opportunities in associated communities.

Denna skriftiga avhandling omfattar en redogörelse kring examensarbetet dimensionering av färdigvarulager. Arbetet har genomförts på Scania DT i Södertälje inom avdelningen för transmission och axlar. Den centrala delen i arbetet har varit att studera hur dagens färdigvarulager för transmission skall kunna möta framtidens produktionsrelaterade utmaningar. I samband med att högre produktionsvolymer var prognostiserade inom den ärmaste åren samt att ett helt nytt artikelprogram parallellt skulle införas i sortimentet så talade sammantaget för att dagens kapacitet skulle överskridas. För att säkra färdigvarulagrets kapacitet inför de framtida omställningarna skulle området granskas för att sedan presentera lösningsförslag på en rad punkter i syfte att ge lagret ökad kapacitet. Primärt inriktades fokus på att se över lagrets dimensionering, och genom byggnation av simuleringsmodeller kunna presentera förslag på nödvändiga dimensionersom skulle kunna hantera de ökade produktionsvolymerna. Scania efterfrågade även att simuleringsmodellerna skulle kunna appliceras på deras övriga system för färdigvarulager och då kunna presentera liknande dimensionsförslag inför framtida scenarion. Arbetet avgränsades till att se över tre tidshorisonter som hade avgörande betydelse för lagrets kapacitet. Horisonterna omfattade att överskåda dagens volymer samt två framtida steg av produktionsökning och reducering av systemets takttider vilket skulle generera större volymflöden av produkter. Genom lösningsmetoderna semistrukturerade intervjuer, byggnation av simuleringsmodeller, observationer och datakällor samlades fakta in för modellbyggnaden.  Modellens första steg var att motsvara dagens färdigvarulager, i syfte att validera resultaten från modellen emot bekräftad data. Sedan skulle framtida produktionsdata genereras utifrån dagens in- och utflöden för att motsvara framtidens produktionsökningar. Framtidens produktionsdata genererades genom att reducera dagens ut- och in leveransdata med differenserna mellan de nya och gamla takttiderna. Dataverktyget Excel tillämpades för hantering av de stora datamängderna, medan simuleringsprogrammet Extendsim9 användes för modellbyggnaden. Programmen kopplades sedan samman och genererade framtidens volymflöden som lagret sedan skulle dimensioneras efter. Dessa resultat skulle även ligga till grund för vidare formulering av lösningsförslag kring hur aspekterna arbetsmetodik och lagerlayout kunnat omarbetas för att öka lagrets hanteringsförmåga. Dessa två aspekter granskades utöver dimensioneringsförslagen eftersom det ända lösningsförslaget som var tillämpningsbara utifrån aspekten dimensionering var utbyggnation i höjd eller bredd för att ge rum för fler ställage. Detta lösningsförslag var mycket kostsamt och inte ett förstahandsval för Scania, vilket efterfrågade andra lösningsmetoder på problemet. Efter att simuleringarna hade genomförts så granskades resultaten från modellens olika komponenter. Resultaten indikerade att nästa produktionsomställning skulle medföra ett produktflöde som överskrider dagens lagringskapacitet. Dessutom skulle truckarnas kapacitet i färdigvarulagret överbeläggas i samband med reducerad takttid, vilket skulle innebära regelbundna produktionstopp då transportbanorna överbeläggs med artiklar. Lösningsförslag presenterades i syfte att säkerställa färdigvarulagrets framtida kapacitet, där förslagen riktades emot de flaskhalsar som hade identifierats parallellt med omställningarna. Förslagen omfattade implementering av höglager, tillförd truck- och transport kapacitet, reducerad liggtid för lagrets artiklar och omarbetad slottid för att möjliggöra ett tillräckligt brett utflöde inför de nya volymerna. Sammantaget resulterar i en kapacitetsökning för dagens färdigvarulager, så att det kan möta framtidens kapacitetskrav. / This written summary includes an account of the thesis project “dimensioning of finished goods inventory”. The work has been carried out at Scania DT in Södertälje within the department for transmission and axles. The central part of the work has been to study how today's finished goods inventory for transmission should be able to face the future production-related challenges. In conjunction with the fact that higher production volumes were forecasted for the next few years and that a completely new article program would be introduced in parallel with today’s assortment concludes that the overall current capacity would be exceeded. In order to secure the capacity of the finished goods inventory before the future changes, the area would be reviewed so that solutions could be proposed on a number of points in order to increase the capacity of the finished goods inventory. Primarily the focus was on reviewing the dimensions of the inventory and building simulation models to be able to present proposals for necessary dimensions that could handle the increased production volumes. Scania also requested that the simulation models could be applied to their other finished goods inventories so the model could be used to present similar dimensional proposals for future scenarios in other inventories. The work was limited to look at three time horizons that were of crucial importance for the inventories capacity. The horizons included the current volumes of today as well as two future stages of increase in production with a reduction of the system's cycle times, which would generate larger volume flows of products. Data for the simulation models were collected with the solution methods, semistructured interviews, construction of simulation models, observations and data sources. The model's first step was to mirror to today's finished goods inventory, in order to validate the model against confirmed data. Then future production data would be generated based on the current input and output flows to correspond to future production increases. The production data of the future was generated by reducing today's output and input data with the differences between the new and old cycle times. The Excel data tool was used to manage the large amounts of data, while the simulation program Extendsim9 was used for the construction of the model. The data in the programs were then linked together and generated the future volume flows that the inventory would be dimensioned for. These results would be the basis for the solutions that would be proposed on how the aspects of working methodology and inventory layout could be reworked to increase the storage capacity of the inventory. These two aspects were examined in addition to the proposals for dimensioning, since the only solution proposal that was applicable on the aspect of dimensioning was expansion in height or width to give room for more stalls. This solution was very costly and not a first choice for Scania, which requested other solution methods to the problem. After the simulations were completed, the results of the various components of the model were examined. The results indicated that the next production increase would result in a product flow that exceeds today's storage capacity. In addition the capacity of the trucks in the finished goods inventory would be overloaded in conjunction with reduced cycle time, which would mean regular production stoppages when the conveyor belts were overloaded with articles. Solution proposals were presented in order to ensure the future capacity of the finished goods inventory, where the solutions were aimed against the bottlenecks that had been identified in parallel with the changes. The proposals included the implementation of high bay warehouse, added truck and transport capacity, reduced lay time for the inventory´sarticles and revised time slots to enable a sufficiently wide outflow for the new volumes. This results in an overall increase in capacity for todays finished goods inventory, so that it can meet the future capacity requirements.

The problem of this study is whether between-channel redundancy in an instructional audio-visual message enhances immediate recall of information more than within—channel redundancy. A secondary purpose was to compare three forms of between—channel redundancy! audio—video, audio—video—caption, and audio-caption with one form of within-channel redundancy: video-caption. These comparisons were designed to demonstrate which form of redundancy had a higher association with recall of information. The subjects were administered the Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Inventory to measure listening skills, and the Receiver Apprehension Inventory to identify subjects who experienced significantly high apprehension as receivers of information. Then the subjects were randomly divided into four treatment groups and shown an eight minute newscast. All four groups were presented the same instructional message, but the mode of presentation differed depending upon the treatment group. After viewing the instructional program each member of each group was given a forty item multiple-choice retention inventory based on the information presented in the newscast. The data were presented in terms of correct responses on the Kentucky Comprehensive Listening Inventory and the forty item retention inventory. Discriminate analysis was used to determine which items from the multiple-choice retention inventory accounted for the most variance. Thirteen items were found to account for the greatest amount of variance. Reliability estimates were calculated for all four story categories and for the forty items collectively. All reliability estimates were acceptable.

No description available.

The purpose of this study was to determine the correlation between the Values for Living Test and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. The values systems (Tribalistic, Egocentric, Absolutistic, Achievistic, Sociocentric, and Individualistic) based on the "Levels of Psychological Existence," developed by Clare W. Graves, provided the framework for the Values for Living Test. The two tests were administered to 188 subjects. The Pearson product-moment correlation was the statistical measure employed to correlate the data. The scales of egocentrism, sociocentrism and individualism on the Values for Living Test correlated significantly to several of the scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

In many equipment-intensive organizations in the manufacturing, service and particularly the defense sectors, service parts inventories constitute a significant source of tactical and operational costs and consume a significant portion of capital investment. For instance, the Defense Logistics Agency manages about 4 million consumable service parts and provides about 93% of all consumable service parts used by the military services. These items required about US$1.9 billion over the fiscal years 1999-2002. During the same time, the US General Accountability Office discovered that, in the United States Navy, there were about 3.7 billion ship and submarine parts that were not needed. The Federal Aviation Administration says that 26 million aircraft parts are changed each year. In 2002, the holding cost of service parts for the aviation industry was estimated to be US$50 billion. The US Army Institute of Land Warfare reports that, at the beginning of the 2003 fiscal year, prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom the aviation service parts alone was in excess of US$1 billion. This situation makes the management of these items a very critical tactical and strategic issue that is worthy of further study. The key challenge is to maintain high equipment availability with low service cost (e.g., holding, warehousing, transportation, technicians, overhead, etc.). For instance, despite reporting US$10.5 billion in appropriations spent on purchasing service parts in 2000, the United States Air Force (USAF) continues to report shortages of service parts. The USAF estimates that, if the investment on service parts decreases to about US$5.3 billion, weapons systems availability would range from 73 to 100 percent. Thus, better management of service parts inventories should create opportunities for cost savings caused by the efficient management of these inventories. Unfortunately, service parts belong to a class of inventory that continually makes them difficult to manage. Moreover, it can be said that the general function of service parts inventories is to support maintenance actions; therefore, service parts inventory policies are highly related to the resident maintenance policies. However, the interrelationship between service parts inventory management and maintenance policies is often overlooked, both in practice and in the academic literature, when it comes to optimizing maintenance and service parts inventory policies. Hence, there exists a great divide between maintenance and service parts inventory theory and practice. This research investigation specifically considers the aspect of joint maintenance and service part inventory optimization. We decompose the joint maintenance and service part inventory optimization problem into the supplier s problem and the customer s problem. Long-run expected cost functions for each problem that include the most common maintenance cost parameters and service parts inventory cost parameters are presented. Computational experiments are conducted for a single-supplier two-echelon service parts supply chain configuration varying the number of customers in the network. Lateral transshipments (LTs) of service parts between customers are not allowed. For this configuration, we optimize the cost functions using a traditional, or decoupled, approach, where each supply chain entity optimizes its cost individually, and a joint approach, where the cost objectives of both the supplier and customers are optimized simultaneously. We show that the multiple objective optimization approach outperforms the traditional decoupled optimization approach by generating lower system-wide supply chain network costs. The model formulations are extended by relaxing the assumption of no LTs between customers in the supply chain network. Similar to those for the no LTs configuration, the results for the LTs configuration show that the multiobjective optimization outperforms the decoupled optimization in terms of system-wide cost. Hence, it is economically beneficial to jointly consider all parties within the supply network. Further, we compare the model configurations LTs versus no LTs, and we show that using LTs improves the overall savings of the system. It is observed that the improvement is mostly derived from reduced shortage costs since the equipment downtime is reduced due to the proximity of the supply. The models and results of this research have significant practical implications as they can be used to assist decision-makers to determine when and where to pre-position parts inventories to maximize equipment availability. Furthermore, these models can assist in the preparation of the terms of long-term service agreements and maintenance contracts between original equipment manufacturers and their customers (i.e., equipment owners and/or operators), including determining the equitable allocation of all system-wide cost savings under the agreement.

Inventory management in car dealership enterprises is one of the main goals to promote competitiveness and also a key success factor of sustainable economic development. The purpose of the thesis involves improving car dealership enterprises’ inventory management. The thesis is concerned with theoretical approaches to inventory management. Educational literature, statistical data of the Federal State Statistics Service, corporative statistics data and also results of opinion pull findings were used as the basis for the research. In the master thesis was represented the algorithm of order and shipment of items, based on turnover ratio, storage period and sales variation coefficient. The key element of the algorithm lies in accounting of individual optional equipment of each item, not the item itself. Implementation of the described algorithm serves to reduce storage period of items, thereby driving down carrying costs. / Управление товарными запасами на дилерском предприятии является одним из факторов обеспечения конкурентоспособности и залогом устойчивого экономического развития. Цель работы заключается в совершенствовании управления запасами на предприятии. В работе рассматриваются теоретические подходы к управлению запасами на предприятии. Учебно-методическая литература, статистические данные Федеральной службы государственной статистики, данные корпоративной статистики и данные, полученные в ходе социологического опроса были использованы в качестве источников информации для проведения исследования. В ходе написания магистерской диссертации был разработан алгоритм заказа и отгрузки с распределительного склада автомобилей, который основан на учете коэффициента оборачиваемости, срока хранения и коэффициента вариации по результатам продаж, особенностью которого является учет индивидуального опционального оснащения в каждой заказанной единице товара, что позволяет сократить срок хранения товара на складе, тем самым способствуя сокращению затрат предприятия на хранение запасов.

This thesis addresses an inventory management problem of what, when and how many products should be ordered from the supplier applying order line fees. Order line fee is a fixed fee which the company pays to the supplier per every ordered product not depending on the ordered quantity. Even though there are various inventory management methods and variety of research done in the field, there was no research found related to inventory management when supplier order line fees are applied. The described problem is real and currently exists at the company ASWO Baltic. The problem is solved by using experimental research method and CRISP-DM process. The historical company’s data of customer and supplier orders is used for the project. Data is analyzed and prepared for model creation by using feature engineering, data transformation and data normalization methods. Min/Max inventory management method is used as a base for model creation. The improvement proposed by the thesis is to use machine learning algorithms to predict Min and Max stock levels. Support Vector Regression, k-nearest neighbors, Random Forest, Artificial Neural Network, ARIMA, and Prophet machine learning algorithms are tested both for Min and Max level prediction. It was found out that the best results for Min stock level prediction were achieved by k-nearest neighbors algorithm with the average sMAPE measure of 7.0079%. The best predictions for Max stock level were done by Random Forest algorithm with the average sMAPE of 15.0303%. After the hyperparameter optimization sMAPE was improved to 6.8730% and 14.6813% accordingly. The simulation was run to evaluate if the proposed algorithm outperforms the current system. It showed that for the items which have more than 200 orders the algorithm decreased the number of supplier orders by 35,83% and the number of backorders by 49,29% while keeping almost the same inventory turnover. If the same results are achieved with the all products, it is expected that the company would save around 60K euros per annum on supplier order line fees and the lower number of backorders would increase sales by 24%. / Detta examensarbete tar upp ett lagerhanteringsproblem om vad, när och hur många produkter som ska beställas från leverantören som tillämpar orderradsavgifter. Orderradsavgift är en fast avgift som företaget betalar till leverantören för varje beställd produkt, inte beroende på beställd kvantitet. Även om det finns olika lagerhanteringsmetoder och olika undersökningar som gjorts inom området, hittades ingen forskning relaterad till lagerhantering när orderradsavgifter tillämpas. Det beskrivna problemet existerar idag på företaget ASWO Baltic. Problemet löstes genom att använda experimentell forskningsmetod och CRISPDM- process. Företagets historiska data om kund- och leverantörsbeställningar har används för projektet. Data har analyseras och förbereds och modellerats med hjälp av funktionsteknik, datatransformation och datanormaliseringsmetoder. Min/Max lagerhanteringsmetoden används som bas för att skapa en modell. Förbättringen som föreslås i avhandlingen är att använda maskininlärningsalgoritmer för att förutsäga Min och Max lagernivåer. Stöd för vektorregression, k-närmaste grannar, Random Forest, Artificiellt neuralt nätverk, ARIMA och Prophet maskininlärningsalgoritmer testas både för förutsägelse av min- och maxnivå. Det visade sig att de bästa resultaten för förutsägelse av Min lagernivå uppnåddes med algoritmen "k-nearest neighbors" med det genomsnittliga sMAPE-måttet på 7,0079%. De bästa förutsägelserna för Max lagernivå gjordes av Random Forest-algoritmen med den genomsnittliga sMAPE på 15,0303%. Efter hyperparameteroptimeringen förbättrades sMAPE till 6,8730 % och 14,6813 % i enlighet därmed. Simuleringen kördes för att utvärdera om den föreslagna algoritmen överträffar det nuvarande systemet. Den visade att för de artiklar som har mer än 200 beställningar minskade algoritmen antalet leverantörsbeställningar med 35,83 % och antalet restorder med 49,29 % samtidigt som det bibehöll nästan samma lageromsättning. Om samma resultat uppnås med alla produkter, förväntas företaget spara cirka 60 000 euro per år på leverantörsorderavgifter och det lägre antalet restorder skulle öka försäljningen med 24 %.