Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)

When higher visibility through Vendor Managed Inventory leads to higher service levels, higher income won’t be far behind.

VMI Business benefits

Increased sales
Improved delivery performance
Decreased stock-outs
Higher service-levels
Closer vendor/ customer relationships
Increased information transparency
Decreased inventory write-offs/ write-downs
Dramatically decreased inventory carrying costs for the customer
Shorter lead-times
Less effort for your customers

Vendor Managed Inventory Challenges

Today an excellent product does not necessarily represent the keys to the kingdom. It allows you to participate but you need to add value for your customer to assure yourself of future business. You need to ensure your customer is profitable and you are a vital supplier to their business. How? By increasing their inventory visibility -- helping your customer better manage their inventories and by helping them determine what they should be receiving and when.

As organizations have reduced their staffing levels, they spend limited amount of time managing inventories, resulting in poorer customer service levels and sales. Companies that want to maximize their performance need to examine managing the inventory levels of their products at their customers' sites -- Vendor Managed Inventory -- enabling their customers to focus on other issues while increasing sales and profits.

The solution

Invendia's Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solution is an inventory management system which enables the set of processes that allow a supplier to manage inventory and re-supply for their customers. In this scenario, the customer relinquishes the work load of managing the suppliers' parts in exchange for providing inventory visibility into their inventory levels and their requirements.

Features

The Invendia solution supports three modes of VMI:

VMI (vendor managed inventory): The vendor receives electronic data about the customer's sales and stock levels. The vendor is responsible for creating and maintaining the inventory plan. The vendor generates the replenishment order, not the customer.
Consignment: The vendor or distributor places inventory at a customer's location and retains ownership of the inventory. Payment is not made until the item is sold or consumed.
Third-party: A third-party company (usually a logistics provider) takes responsibility over maintaining stock levels and the inventory plan.

Other features include: