OPM 502 Inventory Management

Content:

Matching supply with demand constitutes the temporal dimension of logistics. Inventories allow companies to decouple supply and demand and thereby to design the supply processes more efficiently. However, inventories come at a cost. This course discusses different roles that inventory can play in the supply chain. It introduces quantitative models that capture the trade-off between inventory holding costs and performance. The course also complements supply-side inventory management with demand-side revenue management techniques. Core topics of this course include demand forecasting, lot sizing, safety stocks, and revenue management.

Learning outcomes:

In this course, students will learn how inventories can be used to manage supply chain performance. They will learn to distinguish different functions of inventory in different supply chain environments. The course enables students to analyze inventory systems quantitatively and to determine the right inventory levels to achieve given performance objectives. Students will also get acquainted with the basic principles of revenue management and understand how these are interrelated with inventory management.

Prerequisites:

• Formal: None          
• Recommended: Basic knowledge in operations management (e.g. BSc course “Produktion”), basic knowledge in mathematics (including Linear Programming) and in statistics (probability distributions)