Reducing finished cardboard carton inventory: A case study

This work describes a case study of aMexican company that manufactures a numerous number of cardboard carton box sku´s. The firm has the strategy of producing to order 26% of its sales and the rest is fabricated to stock. The main problem that requires the attention of upper management corresponds to the high level of finished goods inventory maintained by the company. After an exhaustive stage of analysis, it was found that the main aspects that contribute to the huge inventory levels are; poor handling of demand forecasting; deficient coordination with the area of production planning and control and; customer service management. The paper describes in a detailed basis the initiatives designed to improve the root causes. Also, it provides a summary of the results obtained in pilot testing.