Inventory Management

Amazon and Walmart Inventory Management Course Name Subject Professor Date Inventory management has remained a fundamental component of supply chain management in diverse companies for centuries. This approach plays a critical role in the capacity of the firms to organize their production processes and ensure that they supply their customers with desirable products or services while maintaining company growth. Meredith (1) reports that inventory management is a complex process that organizes, coordinates, and regulates the supply and usage of diverse resources through informed decisions to ensure that a company maintains a desirable inventory level. Such a process protects the firm from supply and demand uncertainties, facilitates material movement, influences anticipation of unforeseeable events, and ensures decoupling for seamless operations. Thus, service companies such as Amazon and Walmart consider inventories essential due to their unique roles in their processes. Types of Inventories by Amazon and Walmart Inventories vary based on the primary activities of a company. In this context, a service-providing company will include significantly different ones from those commonplaces in a manufacturing firm. As goods-supplying establishments, Amazon and Walmart may share inventory types. For instance, the two firms manage raw materials. According to Meredith (1), this type of inventory integrates the commodities, objects, items, and elements that the firms buy from suppliers for production. The materials may range from the packaging rolls for designing boxes and other items for organizing customers’ orders. The two companies may also require other inventories, such as the “maintenance, repair, and operating (MRO)” type of inventories (Meredith, 1). The author describes these as the items companies require to maintain their operations continuously. Such aspects ensure the machinery used in the moving packages remains functional mechanically. Meredith (1) also highlights the “work in progress (WIP)” as the diverse materials being assembled in the packaging lines of the two companies. They may include the decoupling inventories, indicating they are no longer raw materials like paper rolls. The final inventory by these two companies is the finished goods or the ready-to-supply items. Thus, managing such inventories is critical for the success of such firms. The specific characteristics of such inventories are comparable because they stock similar products from diverse suppliers. As a result, the stock-keeping approach indicates that they practice a system that records the products in stock, the amount ordered by customers, and the inventory requested to replenish the sold items. According to Meredith (1), such an approach ensures that inventory management maintains higher inventory levels for quality customer service, indicating the presence of minimal back-orders and stockouts. It minimizes the pressures to order items before the next cycle and delays in satisfying customers’ orders due to the unavailability of requested items. Thus, such features characterize service firms using the models’ Amazon and Walmart practices. Integration of Each of Amazon and Walmart’s Goods and Service Design Concepts Walmart and Amazon remain the leading online and offline shopping stores in the United States, offering dynamic services and varied goods ranging from apparel to groceries and home appliances. The two entities have maintained their dominance in the retail sector through their capacity to evolve to meet customer needs and preferences consistently (Jindal, 2). They prioritize market changes and supply chains, including the inventories, to acclimatize with the trending practices. Such a capability has positioned these players as the top competitors with unique strategies for integrating their goods and service designs. Although both firms use an omnichannel strategy to capture their target audiences and maintain market dominance, their tactics vary slightly in design. For instance, Amazon demonstrates its adaptability by integrating brick-and-mortar systems into its services to reach customers who prefer shopping in physical business premises (Jindal, 2). The company has gained significant recognition for combining its superior e-commerce platforms with offline locations where clients can pick up or return goods. Other unique features associated with this company comprise the fast delivery integrated into its “Go concept” and the “self-service kiosks” that allow increased flexibility for its customers (Jindal, 2). Besides these aspects, customers can navigate the website platforms or applications, identify the items in stock, and estimate the delivery time to track th...