For Lead Times, Break Out of Conventional ThinkingBy Ron Slee
Article Date: 03-01-2011
Copyright(C) 2011 Associated Equipment Distributors. All Rights Reserved.
Get out of the rut and structure lead times by individual parts, not by vendors.
A long time ago, I started in this industry with a one-year contract to find and fix a problem with an inventory control application. It was exciting work for me as I got to learn at the feet of a very intelligent and experienced man named David Steele. We were using a forecasting model based on exponential smoothing, which was a statistical forecasting model. Robert G. Brown was the author of most of the inventory control theory in those days and was employed by IBM to assist them with their PIC and MAPICS products. Inventory control was, as far as the computer systems were concerned, complicated and heavily laced with mathematics. Contrast that to the Kardex systems that were being replaced. Quite a difference, and as you might have predicted, the computer systems were not well received.
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