Question

5 - 7 pages, grammar and spelling matter, so be careful.

Proper citations of references. APA format is expected.

Graphs and charts are required to support your arguments.

After you complete your writing, provide a brief executive summary at the beginning of the paper, which gives the reader the key points that will be analyzed, defined or explained in the paper.

You have just been appointed the inventory manager for your company (it's OK to use a hypothetical company here). The boss says you can do whatever you want, he doesn’t care how you manage the inventory as long as you don’t run out, don’t disappoint customers and don’t bankrupt him.

What do you do….and why?

Answer 1

Being an inventory manager brings in a great set of responsibility. As an inventory manager, I am not only responsible for maintaining the stock inventory but also responsible for maintaining the man power too. Being a responsible inventory manager, my job is to ensure that we have real time visibility of moving stocks and future requirements as well, based on the forecasting obtained from various departments.

My company “X” is a supplier to major pharma companies to support their ongoing research and development activities. Considering various Raw materials are required on regular basis to support the research activities, it becomes quite important for me to adopt more systematic and faster approach to maintain the stocks of the material and supply the essential raw materials to my major clients.

Some of my major efforts to maintain the stock and ensure the profit for my company would be-

1. SAP based application- I would ensure that all the raw materials have been entered in SAP based system, which will help me to have a look at the real time availability of all the raw materials.

2. Strengthening my field work team- Some of my team members, who are visiting to all the pharma companies in nearby or remote areas would be given some useful tips on regular basis, on how to interact with the influential people in pharma company. At the end of the day a fruitful interaction and convincing communication would bring in the business for my company.

3. Ensuring on time delivery of raw material from offshore unit- Being a MNC, some of the warehouses are located in different countries. Hence asking them to send the critical RM well in advance and ensuring the buffer stock availability at my unit would give me a decisive commercial advantage over the other competitors. Enabling RM (Raw material) at crucial time is well appreciated by all the pharma companies and I understand that this strategy will certainly help me to create a special niche of our company’s name in business.

4. Motivating the ground level employees- I would be interacting with my ground level team, who is responsible for delivering and transportation of the material, on regular basis. It will help me to understand the challenges and issues faced by them. I believe that if I can keep my colleagues motivated, then it would help me to manage my deliverables efficiently.