Materials management involves the management functions that support the completion of the cycle of material flow (Arnord, Chapman, & Clive, 2020). Therefore, an effective material management process must ensure that the right materials are at the right place whenever they are needed. To do that, material management is involved in planning, directing, and controlling the time, location, transportation, kind, and amount of the various flows of materials that are to be used and also produced during the process.
Primarily, effective material management should ensure the supply of materials in the specified quality and quantity doing so at a reasonable cost and ensuring that there is continuity of supply. It should also ensure that there is high inventory turnover by minimizing the investments in inventory and materials costs. The source from which the items are purchased should be reliable and selling them at the market price (Vrat, 2016). A reliable supplier helps a company to overcome difficult situations by meeting the company’s supply needs.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Effective material management should ensure that there is a correct and up-to-date inventory of the current amount of materials in the stock. It should also ensure that there is an accounting inventory system that can track all movement of inventory items. It should also ensure that there is proper timing by forecasting the needed items. It is important to note that, while meeting the rising customer demands, it is essential to avoid overstocking when the demand is low so that there are reduced inventory costs (Panigrahi & Jena, 2020).
Material management should also reduce the costs by applying different cost reduction methods like variety standardization, reduction, and simplification, inventory control, value analysis, and purchase research. It should also ensure that there is efficient coordination of functions like storage, planning, maintenance, and scheduling of the processes (Gopalakrishnan & Haleem, 2015). For it to be effective, it should ensure that it achieves the desired customer service level. It should also ensure that it is less costly.
References
Arnold, T., Chapman, S., & Clive, L. (2020). Introduction to materials management . Pearson.
Gopalakrishnan, P., & Haleem, A. (2015). Handbook of materials management . PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.
Panigrahi, R. R., & Jena, D. (2020). Inventory control for materials management functions—A conceptual study. In New Paradigm in Decision Science and Management (pp. 187-193). Springer, Singapore.
Vrat, P. (2016). MATERIALS MANAGEMENT . SPRINGER, INDIA, PRIVATE.
