Stocks of goods or materials are inventories. They often are located at points where there is a change in the rate and unit of movement. A grain elevator might receive grain from local farmers at the rate of two or three truckloads a day during the harvest season and hold the grain until it is shipped out at the rate of several railcars a week over a six-month period. Inventories represent an investment that the owner hopes to sell. (Sometimes they represent an âinvoluntaryâ investment that occurs when goods are produced faster than they are sold.) There are costs associated with holding inventories, however, including interest on the money invested in the inventory, storage costs, and risks of deterioration, obsolescence, and shrinkage. A dealer holding this yearâs automobiles suffers a loss in inventory value when next yearâs models are announced, because the autos in the inventory are now âone year oldâ in the buyersâ eyes. Inventory âshrinkageâ is the term that acknowledges and measures the fact that most inventory records show more goods have entered an inventory than can be found.
Many different classes of products are kept in a firmâs inventory. They include company supplies, finished goods (made by the firm), packaging materials, labels, promotional materials (catalogs and samples), raw materials and components, resale goods (purchased from other firms for resaleâe.g., a firm that manufactures vacuum cleaners may buy vacuum bags from an outside source), returned goods made by others, returned products made by the firm, scrap and waste to be disposed of, scrap and waste to be recycled, spare parts, traded-in goods of a competitorâs brand, traded-in goods of oneâs own brand, and work-in-process goods. Inventory must be rotated, or âturned,â with new units replacing old ones. This is referred to as the FIFO (first inâfirst out) system. Storage and selling racks are often arranged so that the oldest item moves out first. Rotation is especially important in the food industry, where many items are perishable, and even packaged goods have expiration or âpullâ dates on them because the manufacturer does not want them sold after a certain date. For products that might be traded internationally, there are additional inventory classifications: the country of origin, because import duties or charges sometimes vary by country of origin; countries where goods can be sold (e.g., some foreign automobiles cannot be sold in the United States because of emission control requirements); and the specific languages used on the product or package or in catalogs.
Order processing starts with the receipt of an order from a customer. It may be obtained by a salesperson, be telephoned in, or arrive by mail. Regular buyers and sellers are often linked electronically. As the buyerâs inventories become low, an electronic purchase order is generated. It is communicated to the seller, whose computers will determine that the goods are available, and the seller will inform the buyer, still using electronic methods, that the order will be filled and shipped by a certain date. The first step in most order-processing systems is to verify the accuracy of the orderâthat is, to make certain that the document contains no internal errors that might mean the customer was uncertain about what he or she was ordering. The next step is to verify the customerâs credit or ability to pay. After determining from which inventory point to ship the goods, instructions are sent to that warehouse to fill the order. At the warehouse an âorder picking listâ is given to a warehouse worker, who assembles the specific order. In the packing area, it is checked and packed for shipment, and the package is labeled. The traffic manager prepares the transportation documents and notifies a carrier to pick up the shipment. An invoice for the goods is sent to the buyer, and various inventory and financial records are updated. The shipper uses the term âorder cycleâ to indicate the span of time between receiving and shipping the order. The buyer uses the phrase to indicate the span of time between placing and receiving the order.
Two purposes are served by packaging: promoting the product and protecting it. The promotional effort is to make the product stand out on a store shelf and say âtake me homeâ to the customer walking down the store aisle. The protective function is to protect the product and, in some instances, to keep the product from damaging surrounding items. Retail packages of food and drugs must be tamperproof to the extent that the consumer can determine whether the package has been tampered with. Choice of packaging materials also is influenced by concerns for environmental protection. Containers that can be recycled, or are made of recycled materials, are enjoying increased demand. Many local and state laws encourage the recycling of beverage containers.
Most retail products are packed in a hierarchy of packaging. The concept can be compared to building blocksâthe smallest size is the shelf container that the customer buys and takes home. These containers fit into boxes that are about one cubic foot in dimension and are unloaded, item by item, by the person stocking the shelves. These boxes in turn are handled on pallets, wooden platforms about 6 inches high and 40 inches by 48 inches along the top. Pallets are loaded two or four boxes high and moved by mechanical devices known as forklift trucks, tractorlike vehicles with two lifting prongs in front that fit into slots in the pallet and then lift it. Loaded pallets are moved by forklift trucks into and out of warehouses, railcars, and trucks, Pallet loads are also called âunit loadsâ and are the most common way of handling packaged freight. Goods that are not packaged are often handled in bulk. Examples are iron ore, coal, and grains that move in trainload, truckload, and shipload lots. They are loaded, unloaded, and transferred by large mechanical devices. Liquids such as petroleum are pumped through pipelines or carried in vessels called tankers. Flour and cement are moved between dry tanks pneumatically (i.e., by large vacuum devices).
