Klarinet Archive - Posting 000496.txt from 2000/01

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] Good Middle School Bass Clarinet?
Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2000 23:31:22 -0500

At 05:46 PM 1/15/2000 -0800, Neil Leupold wrote:
>--- Bill Hausmann <bhausman@-----.com> wrote:
>
>> Just-in-time inventory control works really well for manufacturers who have
>> a reliable source of supply for production PARTS inventory where the
>> production level is relatively constant, or at least predictable. As an
>> inventory control method for SALES, unless the demand is very predictable
>> (yeah, right!), it simply does not work, regardless of how much managers
>> and accountants would like it to. It would be like figuring that last year
>> your store sold 12 clarinets, so you should order from the factory one
>> clarinet to be delivered each month for the year.
>
>P.S. With respect to JIT's usefulness being restricted to relationships
>between manufacturers and their PARTS suppliers, consider the fact that
>through EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) and the Point-of-Sale data gather-
>ing that goes on in grocery stores (through the bar code system), many
>grocery stores in the country have JIT supply relationships directly with
>their wholesale suppliers of FINISHED GOODS. It is clearly possible for a
>retail operation to use JIT at the finished goods node of its supply chain.
>
OK. I agree it can work where the turnover is relatively HUGE as in your
example. But even Selmer (USA) probably sells at most HUNDREDS of bass
clarinets in a year worldwide, not evenly distributed either geographically
or chronologically. A drop in sales in a grocery store of 5 cans per month
of Del Monte Green Beans would be an insignificant blip in the statistics,
whereas 5 bass clarinets might easily represent 2 YEARS worth of sales to a
medium-sized music store. We can't even control REED inventory well enough
based on sales history to keep from running short. The critical factors in
JIT are predictablility of demand and reliability of supply. At the store
level, we cannot accurately predict demand, and the manufacturers are
clearly not providing reliable supply.

Bill Hausmann bhausman@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://www.concentric.net/~bhausman
Essexville, MI 48732 http://homepages.go.com/~zoot14/zoot14.html
ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is too loud.

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