Inventory Control for a Small Business

This paper is an examination of several inventory related problems faced by many small businesses. Specifically the problems addressed are: 1) How can the manager of a small business easily and efficiently track his inventory items in order to determine their individual inventory turnovers? 2) How should the manager judge these individual inventory turnovers? How can he judge the performance of a particular item? 3) How many of a given item should be stocked or ordered at a given time? How should safety stocks be determined? Chapter Two addresses each of these questions giving several alternate solutions developed from the literature pertaining to the subject. These methods are then applied to a particular case in Chapter Three. The case under consideration is a small bookstore located in Minot, North Dakota. This study concludes that the best solution to the inventory problems of the bookstore is a simple manual system. The tracking of items is accomplished via a combination of color coding and tear-tags, the judging of turnovers is based upon breakeven levels, and the ordering of merchandise is based upon a fixed time period model