Q.1. what do you understand by Vendor-managed Inventory (VMI)?
Ans. Vendor managed inventory: The very purpose of JIT is to reduce Inventory at all places in the supply chain. Inventory is considered a waste because Inventory is created by using materials, machines and efforts of persons. All of these Are resources which have already been used up and that portion of it which is not Consumed and sent up the value chain causes a drag on the system.
However, inventories are inevitable because uncertainties exist at every Stage, making it necessary to provide a buffer so that demands do not go unfilled. The challenge is to keep it to the minimum. To make this happen, the calculations involving the following are necessary.
* Forecasts of the market demand * Capacities of the equipments * Worker absenteeism * Suppliers’ lead times * Quality of the produced components
Each of these will have many factors which affect them. JIT depends upon accurate assessment of them and based on the decisions taken, activities are initiated. These should result in holding materials as small as the number of Components or products as feasible to maintain flow of material without disruption. Many companies make their suppliers hold their inventories and request them to make timely supplies. This may be done at a cost
Q.2. Explain briefly the four classification of scheduling strategies & its approaches.
Ans. TYPES OF SCHEDULING STRATEGIES: Burst Campaigns: often associated with the awareness objective, the burst campaign compacts media activities into a series of relatively short time frames, with relatively long periods of absence from media activity in between. This pattern may be used when a new product is being introduced. Fighting: Wave method or the fighting method is another kind of scheduling. In fighting, advertisements are bunched with the intention of providing a concentrated impact. It