Inventory Management Strategies For Productivity Improvement In Equipment Manufacturing Firms

This study examined and developed Inventory Management Strategies IMS which could be creatively employed for Productivity Improvement in Equipment Firms PIEMF Equipment manufacturing projects suffer from declining productivity and inability to effectively satisfy customized order batch quantity within schedules budgeted cost and quality specifications due to lack of robust and well defined IMS as well as none code classification of vast number of inventory item. Survey and expost-facto research designs were adopted on the four identified IMS in three EMF. The method used for primary data collection and measurement on four IMS and inventory management parameters was questionnaire modelled into likert five point scale from the target respondents being experts in the subject matter. The secondary data was obtained from the computerised inventory status file of the three equipment manufacturing firms. The methods of primary data analysis and test of research used were Pearsons product moment correlation coefficient and oneway. Analysis of variance ANOVA computer software via Statistical Program for Social Science SPSS version 17 ABC analysis and classification of materials was used for code categorization of secondary data also with the aid of Microsoft excel. The results of the analyses highlighted and isolated A class of inventory items which are 137 out of 543 for Siemens Nig. Ltd 154 out of 551 for Dresser-Rand Nig. Ltd and 162 of 551 for Nigerian Engineering Works Ltd. The results of Pearson product moment correlation analysis and test of research hypotheses indicate that Materials Requirements Planning MRP followed by Supply Chain Management SCM are the most significant IMS as they correlate strongly with PIEMF. The study recommends IMS adoption by code classification of materials in which MRP or SCM could be deployed for management of A class of inventories while classical IMS could be used for management B and C classes of inventory items.