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Materials management is the branch of logistics that deals with the tangible components of a supply chain. Specifically, this
covers the acquisition of spare parts and replacements, quality control of purchasing and ordering such parts, and the standards
involved in ordering, shipping, and warehousing the said parts.
Areas of Concentration
Materials management is just managing all types of materials in an organization. It can be broken down into three areas:
acquisition, quality control, and standards. The Materials Manager is an important person to attend the Production Meetings
that are usually held daily.
"Marketing is an economic process."--wasim
Quality Assurance
Materials management also ensures that parts and materials used in the supply chain meet minimum requirements by performing
quality assurance (QA). While most of the writing and discussion about materials management is on acquisition and standards,
much of the day to day work conducted in materials management deals with QA issues. Parts and material are tested, both before
purchase orders are placed and during use, to ensure there are no short or long term issues that would disrupt the supply
chain. [1] Material management is most important for industrial point of view.
Standards
The final component of materials management is standards compliance. There are standards that are followed in supply chain
management that are critical to a supply chain's function. For example, a supply chain that uses |just-in-time or lean replenishment
requires absolute perfection in the shipping of parts and material from purchasing agent to warehouse to place of destination.
Systems reliant on vendor-managed inventories must have up-to-date computerized inventories and robust ordering systems for
outlying vendors to place orders on. Materials management typically insures that the warehousing and shipping of such components
as are needed follows the standards required to avoid problems. This component of materials management is the fastest changing
part, due to recent innovations in SCM and in logistics in general, including outsourced management of warehousing, mobile
computing, and real-time logistical inventories
Materials Management & Stock Control
This article provides an overview of current inventory / materials management processes with reference to other techniques.
It covers "push" and "pull systems", Just in Time (JIT) systems and associated Kanban systems, MRP1, MRP2,
ERP systems, Agile Manufacturing, simple visual processes, and other less well known, but equally effective, processes and
systems. It also puts them into a logical and historical context.
Links to other best practices and training at bottom of page.
Introduction
Before commencing, it is worth spending a few minutes describing the environments to which these processes and systems
are addressed. They range from simple stockist type environments to highly complex manufactured products, manufacturing processes
and distribution networks. They also range from low volume, or one-off complex assemblies or mixtures, to very high volume
mass produced products of varying complexity. It is not surprising therefore that a wide range of techniques have been developed
to accommodate this range of applications.
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