Education Commons^™

Abc Analysis For Inventory Management: Bridging The Gap Between Research And Classroom, Handanhal Ravinder, Ram B. Misra

Department of Management Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

ABC analysis is a well-established categorization technique based on the Pareto Principle for determining which items should get priority in the management of a company's inventory. In discussing this topic, today's operations management and supply chain textbooks focus on dollar volume as the sole criterion for performing the categorization. The authors argue that today's businesses and supply chains operate in a world where the ability to deliver the right products rapidly to very specific markets is key to survival. With suppliers, intermediaries, and customers all over the globe, and product lives decreasing rapidly, this focus on a single criterion is …