Supply Chain Management

In today`s competitive environment it it not sufficient for most businesses to optimize only internal structures and processes. Through optimization of the performance of the whole supply chain and especially through cost reduction and by improving lead times, enterprises establish competitiveness. Due to its high potentials, inventory management has become an important buzzword. The author Vera Himmelbauer gives an introductive overview over existing basic inventory models and provides a classification of them based on existing kinds of inventory and lot size models. She also considered about existing mathematical-analytical or heuristic solution methodologies not only in a theoretical way, but also implemented one selected inventory model comparing the different solution methodologies using the simulation approach. This way, she tended to point out differences in the performance in the data results. A fundamental part of her substantiated study contains the inspection of current supply chain management software and thereupon the examination about the significance of inventory management in SCM software.