Creating shareholder value is the ultimate goal of all businesses, so all processes should be directly tied to it.(1) The wholesale distributor’s core business process framework is a collection of process groups called 7S - source, stock, sell, ship, supply chain planning, and support services. Linking these process groups to shareholder value are the process metrics – percentage of slow moving inventory; and the financial framework. This framework consists of the financial elements – inventory; the financial key performance indicators – GMROII; and the financial drivers – profitability.
Inventory stratification is a specific business process under the inventory management subgroup in the stock process of 7S. Like most processes there is a common, good, and best practice for inventory stratification. Inventory stratification which includes the GMROII (gross margin return on inventory investment) method of A, B, C, D, X and Y items is considered best practice. A, B, C, and D represent items in inventory ranked by percentage of profitability from higher profitability down to zero profitability respectively. X and Y represent items with zero inventories, X represents items with gross margin dollars and Y represents items without any gross margin dollars. GMROII focuses on the items profitability making it a financial driver and is considered best practice. However, for optimal inventory stratification solutions, the final rank should include a combination method of the GMROII method; sales volume method – representative of customer-centric