MANY STEPS TOWARDS ZERO INVENTORY

Zero Inventory (ZI) and Just In Time (JIT) are two of the buzz words that pretend to offer entirely new concepts. Industrial and commercial companies, however, have always strived for stocks close to zero. Moreover, even JIT deliveries cannot cause stocks to disappear entirely-nor is that desirable. This paper describes how a large multinational company tried to reduce its stocks along the chain from raw materials to the distribution outlets. Zero Inventory has not been achieved, but neither was it aimed. A more realistic goal is MRI, the Minimum Reasonable Inventory.