Target Days versus Actual Days of Finished Goods Inventory in Fast Moving Consumer Goods

In a bid to maximize corporate profits, many multi-national corporations and even small medium enterprises create many products and place them on shelves at hypermarkets or supermarkets. We can observe an abundance of stock keeping units on shelves as well as observe a variety of such finished goods held by various fast moving consumer goods industries in the home appliance, beverage, canned food, clothes, soft-drinks, cordials and confectionery product ranges, just to name a few. From supplier, manufacturer, distributor, wholesaler and retailer, it appears that there is a constant flow of new products and stock keeping units held for these fast moving consumer goods. We can say that we humans are a rather wasteful species because a large proportion of products become obsolete or slow moving over time and organizations push products into the marketplace to gain competitive advantage and optimize profits. Hence, there is need to address this issue in the field of Supply Chain Management because resources on this planet are limited and we humans live in a very fragile planet. Yet, as population grows, we humans have become used to this over-abundance even though the resources within this planet are becoming more and more scarce. Consumption levels have increased with population growth and with capitalist thinking, virtually anybody can develop businesses that will create products to meet human needs. In the field of Supply Chain Management, managers set polices on when to order and how much to order and the average inventory that results from these inventory replenishment policies become targets. This paper attempts to compare target days of inventory with actual days of inventory held in warehouses for a single organization with many warehouses/ stock keeping units, in an attempt to understand further approaches that can be used to improve inventory waste within supply chains.