Achieving Effective Inventory Management – 4th Edition contains over 50 pages more than the 3rd edition book, and contains updates on the following areas:

• The difference between inventory control and inventory management.
• Each department's role in achieving effective inventory management.
• Protecting against theft and inventory abuse.
• Character traits of effective warehouse managers.
• Ranking products by cost of goods sold, activity, and profitability.
• Maintaining accurate on-hand quantities.
• Warehouse and stockroom organization.
• Benefits of various material storage methods.
• Advantages of different product location strategies
• Storing products to minimize the cost of filling orders.
• How much space you need to effectively store your stocked products.
• What to do when you run out of warehouse space.
• Evaluating the benefits of bar coding and other technologies.
• Developing your approved stock list for each warehouse.
• Differences between stock for sale and MRO (maintenance, repairs, and operations) inventory.
• Defining "good," "bad," and "ugly" inventory.
• Simple methods to calculate your projected inventory investment and potential inventory turnover.
• Why you need to rank your stocked products three ways: based on number of transactions, cost of goods sold, and profitability.
• Metrics to determine the performance of your investment in stock inventory.
• Elements of an accurate forecast of future demand.
• Monitoring the accuracy of your forecasts of future demand of products.
• Accurately capturing historic usage of stocked items.
• Properly stocking items with sporadic usage.
• Determining the proper time period for forecasting demand.
• How to properly capture demand in a distribution center environment.
• Adjusting usage for unusual activity that will not reoccur.
• How trends, promotions, the environment, and other factors can affect a forecast.
• How to obtain, analyze, and apply collaborative information from customers, salespeople, and other sources.
• Determining how much of a new item to stock and developing a new-item questionnaire.
• Dealing with "fashion" items that will only be marketed for a limited time.
• Finding the best forecast formula for different patterns of usage.
• How to easily identify items with seasonal usage patterns.
• Maintaining accurate projected lead times.
• Identifying the individual elements of a projected lead time.
• Why long lead times are better than inconsistent lead times.
• Maintaining the "right amount" of safety stock of each product to balance your service-level goals with an "ideal" inventory investment.
• Determining the best-size replenishment order.
• Utilizing residual inventory analysis and early warning reports to fine-tune replenishment parameters.
• When economic order quantities are appropriate and developing the best economic order quantity model.
• When to push inventory turnover with "order up to replenishment."
• How to effectively increase or decrease the size of a replenishment order to meet vendor or transportation requirements.
• Where Just-in-Time replenishment is best utilized.
• Evaluating price-break opportunities.
• Liquidating excess inventory.
• Developing and maintaining an effective replenishment program.
• Distribution Requirements Planning (projecting needs over an extended period of time).
• The challenges of importing products from overseas.
• Materials Requirements Planning (MRP).
• A comprehensive guide to physical inventory and cycle counting.
• How to develop a "policies and procedures" manual for your inventory-related operations.
• Implementing and maintaining a program to achieve the goal of effective inventory management.
• And many other topics...