Inventory Key Performance Indicators
Inventory Key Performance Indicators
Inventory Key Performance Indicators
You can skip by going straight to the individual resource of KPI : Inventory, Order Fulfillment, Procurement, Outsourcing, Logistics & Transportation, Production, Manufacturing, Supply Chain Managemt There is no comprehensive list of KPIs that can be specific to each type of industry. Caution is needed whenever an organization is identifying its performance measures. Measures drive employee behavior towards achieving the organizational goals. Organizations must understand the basic concepts that differentiate scorecards from dashboards and analytics, and KPIs from other business performance indictors.
Balanced Scorecard
What exactly is it? Developed by Kaplan & Norton in 1996, there are many definitions to it. Primarily, it is: a strategic planning and management system used to align business activities to the vision and mission statements of an organization. a strategic concept that involves creating a set of measurements from four perspectives financial goals and performance, customer requirements and success factors, internal business processes and operational excellency, and learning and growth. These four measurement perspectives must be linked, consistent and mutually reinforcing. Some of specific areas of measurements are: Financials - Return On Investment (ROI), Growth Profit Margin, Cashflow, Working Capital, inventories costs, inventory turnovers, Sales, etc. y Customer - Customer service level and satisfaction, retention, acquisition, profitability, market share. y Internal business process - involves refinement in critical internal processes and value chain in innovation (how well products are designed to meet customer's needs), operations (materials availability, product quality, process efficiency, utilization, cycle time, costs, forecast errors, excess and obsolescence, scraps), and aftersales service (warranty, repairs, and handling defects and product's returns). y Learning and Growth - involves in human capital investment (employee retention, training, skills, productivity, morale), systems (critical market information and customer's needs gathered by sales and marketing, that help company to strategize and plan for future product design and as well as other segments of business opportunities), and organizational capabilities (R&D, technologies, market responsiveness, talented managerial depth). Scorecards and dashboards are always used interchangeably, but each brings a different set of capabilities. The sources of the confusion are: Both represent a way to track results. Both use traffic lights, dials, sliders and other visual aids. Both have targets, thresholds and alert messages. Both provide linkage or drill down to other metrics and reports. y The difference comes from the context in how they are applied. Scorecards are intended to be strategic. Dashboards are primarily for data visualization; they display what is happening during a time period. Most organizations begin with identifying what they are already measuring and construct a dashboard dial from there. However, dashboards do not communicate why something
matters. In contrast, a scorecard does provide the information lacking in dashboards. A scorecard additionally answers questions by providing deeper analysis, drill-down capabilities, traffic light alert messaging, and forecasting for inferences of performance potential to determine motivational targets. Scorecards do not start with the existing data, but rather they begin with identifying what strategic projects to complete and core processes to improve and excel in. The selection and validation of the correct or best KPIs is a constant debate. Here are some guidelines for understanding the differences:
Scorecards chart progress toward strategic objectives. A scorecard displays periodic snapshots of performance associated with an organizations strategic objectives and plans. It measures organizational activity at a summary level against pre-defined targets to see if performance is within acceptable ranges. Its selection of KPIs helps executives communicate strategy to employees and focuses users on the highest priority projects, initiatives, actions and tasks required to execute plans.
There are two key distinctions of scorecards: (1) Each KPI must require a predefined target measure; (2) KPIs should be comprised of both project-based KPIs (e.g., milestones, progress percentage of completion) and process-based KPIs (e.g., percent on-time delivery against customer promise dates).
Dashboards monitor and measure processes. A dashboard, on the other hand, is operational and reports information typically more frequently than scorecards and usually with measures.2 Each dashboard measure is reported with little regard to its relationship to other dashboard measures. Dashboard measures do not directly reflect the context of strategic objectives.
Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. KPIs are long-term considerations. The definition of what they are and how they are measured do not change often. The goals for a particular Key Performance Indicator may change as the organization's goals change, or as it gets closer to achieving a goal. It is also important to define the Key Performance Indicators and stay with the same definition from year to year. For examples, will sales be recorded for the KPI at list price or at the actual sales price? Do you take inventory value at different periods of the months and sometimes with different costs when calculating inventory turns?
Goals Setting
Here are some guidelines on how you should go about setting goals. First, make sure you understand exactly what it is your measuring. What drives this measure? What causes failure? Where do you need improvement? Once you can answer these questions, you're in a better position to set your goals. Benchmarking is one other way to set your goals. Also, you should practice SMART goals which are: y Specific: Provide enough detail so that there is no question on what is being measured and no question how the metric is calculated. You should be specific as to the measurement, goals and responsible people/department. Measurable: Here is where you use your metric. Make sure you have a reliable system in place that will accurately measure your performance. Attainable: Will the Supply Chain projects you have scheduled for the year produce results that will achieve your goal? The person setting the goal and the person responsible for achieving the goal should agree with the target. If results are unattainable or unrealistic, they will have a de-motivating effect on your employees.
y y
Realistic: Don't plan to do things if you are unlikely to follow through. Better to plan only a few things and be successful rather than many things and be unsuccessful. Your Supply Chain goals should be challenging, but realistic in relation to the improvement projects you have in place. Time frame: Identify when your targeting to hit your goal.
Below is a list of the commonly used KPIs and the subset of formulas for managing inventory, measuring inventory productivity, evaluating operational efficiencies, profits and growth.
* COGS is an income statement figure which reflects the cost of obtaining raw materials and producing finished goods that are sold to consumers.
Average Inventory
Sum of each period's Beginning stock + Sum of each last period's Ending stock Number of of periods
Cost of Goods Sold during the past 12 months = Inventory Turnover Average Inventory at Cost during the past 12 months A ratio showing how many times a company's inventory is sold and replaced over a period. (Sales Revenue - Cost of Goods Sold) Sales Revenue (GM) Gross margins reveal how much a company earns taking into consideration the costs that it incurs for producing its products and/or services, and is expressed as a percentage. Gross margin is a good indication of how profitable a company is at the most fundamental level. Companies with higher gross margins will have more money left over to spend on other business operations, such as research and development or marketing.
= (GM% x sales turnover) / (1 - markup %) [(Unit Selling Price of an Item - Unit Cost of = an Item) X Annual Demand for the item] / Average Inventory Cost of the product Ending Inventory Balance = Average weekly sales for a given period of time Ending Inventory balance = (Average weekly sales for a given period of time) x 7
or alternatively,
COGS/ 365 days (it gives you the number of days of stock on-hand) COGS/ 52 weeks (it gives you the number of weeks of stock on-hand)
Months of Inventory (WOI) = WOI/4.33 some call it Inventory Months of Supply or alternatively, Sell through % Stock Sales Ratio
= Inventory On Hand / Average Monthly Usage units sold / (units sold + on hand inventory) Beginning of month $ Stock / Sales for period Difference between book and physical inventory
BTP Shrinkage
Table 12.1 below shows the several inventory KPI measurements over a period of 12 months. A company I went for an interview told me that his business unit was tied down with too much inventory dollars of more than $64 millions and they were experiencing a poor inventory turnover of less than 6.0 turns compared to 16 turns the supply chain was well-performing a few years ago. I made out a plan to help the supply chain to improve the inventory turnover in a steadily progressive manner from 5.0 turns to 16.0 turns, measuring from May-2008 up to April-2009. Together with the goal of inventory turnovers are also the plan to improve sales forecast accuracy, to lower the cost of goods sold while at the same time ensuring customer service levels are met continually without risk of stockout, to improve target gross profit margin, to reduce DOI (Days of inventory) and overall average inventory dollars cumulative saving. Assuming time is into year 2009 and actual data are available for measuring inventory management performance. A considerable improvement in inventory turnover from 4.2 turns in May-08 to 16.2 turns in Apr-09 equate to a huge reduction in actual inventory of $50,740,000, or in another word, 81.5% of actual inventory dollars cumulative saving. Over the 12 months period it had also freed up $50.7 millions dollars in cash for the other important businesses. In terms of DOI, it also translates into a reduction in the average days of inventory on-hand from 73 days to 22.8 days. Even with a small 0.3 turns improvement from May-08 to July-08 had resulted in a reduction in average days of inventory on-hand from 73 days to 52.1 days, from the initial capital outlay of $64.24 millions in May-07 beginning inventory level. It was able to free up nearly 10 million dollars ($9.93 M) for other business investment over just a 3-months period. It is not enough to re-emphasize the power of maximizing inventory turns as you can see there were also simultaneous improvement efforts made in other areas of inventory control - beginning inventories, net purchases, ending inventories, cost of goods sold, month-over-month inventory $ cumulative saving. With tightened control on purchasing which had reduced excess and surplus purchases, reduced safety stock level, or reduced the min. and max-order-quantities buying for the slow-usage materials, getting suppliers improved in supply lead time, and hence the costs of goods sold were able to reduce steadily over the measuring period. The lower COGS that was maintained with the different planning strategies, coupled with thje steadily increasing growth in sales revenue over
the period, together had contributed to the higher gross profit margin from 2% to 36% over the 12 months. For any level and list of inventory items, this inventory scorecard can be applied to different product lines, multi-location warehouses, different material classes and material categories, existing Service Level Agreement programs, and also for manufacturing site that has production plan with built-to-stock model. DOWNLOAD this worksheet example as shown in Table 12.1.
Month Target Actual Sales Sales Beginning Purchase Ending COGS $ Forecasted Actual Average Inventory Inventory Forecast Actual $ Inventory Receipts Inventory ('000) Gross Gross Inventory Turns Turns $ ('000) ('000) $ ('000) $ ('000) $ ('000) Margin % Margin On Hand % $ ('000) Average Actual Average Actual Inventory Inventory Inventory Inventory Cumulative Cumulative Cumulative Cumulative Savings $ Savings $ % Saving % Saving ('000) ('000)
May-08 Jun-08 Jul-08 Aug-08 Sep-08 Oct-08 Nov-08 Dec-08 Jan-09 Feb-09 Mar-09 Apr-09
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
4.2 4.3 4.5 5.3 5.6 6.8 7.4 8.4 9.5 12.7 14.1 16.2
23,500 22,882 22,900 20,874 21,325 21,845 22,542 22,980 23,230 23,250 23,845 23,930
22,460 21,545 21,960 22,990 22,786 23,980 23,800 23,720 23,540 23,765 24,980 24,248
64,240 60,937 55,372 53,020 50,045 46,864 40,980 36,076 30,758 24,456 17,489 14,950
19,940 17,890 16,930 16,580 16,230 15,900 15,360 14,755 14,040 13,725 13,020 12,080
62,220 21,960 57,852 20,975 52,285 20,017 48,220 21,380 45,000 21,275 39,934 22,830 34,680 21,660 29,835 20,996 24,900 19,898 18,529 19,652 14,000 16,509 11,480 15,550
62,743 58,535 53,379 48,408 45,589 40,288 35,124 29,994 25,134 18,569 14,050 11,519
4,208 9,364 14,335 17,154 22,455 27,619 32,749 37,609 44,174 48,693 51,224
4,368 9,935 14,000 17,220 22,286 27,540 32,385 37,320 43,691 48,220 50,740
6.7% 14.9% 22.8% 27.3% 35.8% 44.0% 52.2% 59.9% 70.4% 77.6% 81.6%
7.0% 16.0% 22.5% 27.7% 35.8% 44.3% 52.0% 60.0% 70.2% 77.5% 81.5%
73.0 60.8 52.1 45.6 40.6 36.5 33.2 30.4 28.1 26.1 24.3 22.8
Table 12.1 Planning inventory investment through measuring inventory turnovers, cumulative saving and Gross Margin (monthly)
Figure 12.2 Measuring Cost of Goods Sold and Gross Profit Margin
The following is an good example of a dashboard that you can use to effectively track, measure, and evaluate the various categories of the inventory against predefined goals on a weekly basis instead of once every month which are normally too late to react to problems and underperforming results. It evaluates the three levels of inventories - accessible inventory, WIP inventory and the restricted inventory. It also includes the planning and purchasing areas of responsibilities which evaluate the many important issues on inventory productivity and operational efficiencies, and the KPIs in the last section including Customers Service Level, Inventory Turns, Gross Profit Margin and so on. When your organization has the monthly goals on inventory turns, gross profit margin and other KPIs, this weekly dashboard will allow you to timely track and evaluate all the underperforming KPIs before it becoming too late to do anything towards the end of the months.
Over-shipment value would have to be excluded from the inventory total value because that is the extra stock shipped out without being captured in the computer system. The units of measurement are in multiple of million $, percentage and number. The frequency of evaluating the performance is weekly and monthly for some KPI. The "traffic lights" color-coding symbols are used to measure the weekly performance status. I have developed an Excel VBA macro (generic enough and no hardcode) to automatically color-code the status in the column "Trend" so that managers don't need to waste unnecessary time on putting in the color symbols but they can use their valuable time to go through the misperformance with the various stakeholders. You can easily easily develop an Workbook_SheetBeforeDoubleClick Change Event code so that when you double-click on any of the performance measurement indicator (ie. any cell in second column under header "Measurement"), it will bring out the detailed worksheets where the different process owners had reviewed and based their weekly results on. To include such Analytics macro will save you much time because you can quickly and effectively go through the causes and effects analysis with the respective stakeholders. Ask all the stakeholders to save their analysis files in a single designated shared directory with specified subfolder names. This way it is a lot easier for you simply to assign a Constant to the designated directory path. If you need my help on writing the code for the analytics, you can write to me. Further down below is the syntax for this dashboard. You can DOWNLOAD this dashboard worksheet as shown below which also has the code in VB Module.
Green - Meet or exceed goal Red - Controls are not active and/or not meeting goal Yellow - Controls active, trending to goal for 2 consecutive periods Informational purposes only
Measurement
Owner Execute Unit Frequency Goal Trend week week week week or 18 19 20 21 Max
Accessible Inventory : Unrestricted stock on-hand VMI location Reserve stock Inbound stock in-transit within 30days Inbound stock in-transit >30days QI checking Inventory Levels WIP (parts, sub-assembly & finished goods): Front end Assembly Testing Packaging Inaccessible Inventory : QI Rejects/ MRB location Obsolete materials Rework/repair materials with vendors Sales Returns (DOA) william william william william Y Y Y Y $m $m $m $m W W W W 0.020 0.020 0.100 0.020 william william william william N N N N $m $m $m $m W W W W william william william william william william Y Y Y Y Y Y $m $m $m $m $m $m W W W W W W 9.000 0.750 0.200 0.450 0.000 0.180
Y Y Y
$m $m $m $m
W W W W
Excess stock without Safety Stock level & open demand Surplus stock without open demand Excess open Purchase Orders - Class A material Excess open Purchase Orders - Class B and below material Excess open Purchase Requisitions Excess inbound in-transit PO (Delivery Priority 01) without firm demand - aging >30 days PO (other Delivery Priorities) without firm demand - aging >30 days Open PO (Delivery Priority 01) with demand, without ETA Open PO with >60 days Leadtime aging Open PO with 30-60 days Leadtime aging PO Executed > 7 Days Purchasing Purchase Requisition Backlog >7 Days (less Exceptions) Top 25 Critical parts stockout Stockout bins for "Super-Fast" category moving materials Stockout bins for "Fast" category moving materials Stockout bins for "Medium-Fast" category moving materials <0.33 filled bins for "Super-Fast" category moving materials <0.33 filled bins for "Fast" category moving materials <0.33 filled bins for "Medium-Fast" category moving materials Need-To-Buy $ Spot Buy / Contract Buy Purchase Requisition Backlog >7 Days (Less Exceptions) Supplier lead time target reduction in days Direct material cost reduction from Suppliers
william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william william
Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y N Y Y Y N
$m $m $m $m $m $m % % % % % % % % % % % % % % $m % % % $m
W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W M W M M
0.000 0.020 0.010 0.010 0.015 0.000 2.00% 4.00% 0.00% 0.00% 5.00% 20.0% 25.0% 0.00% 0.00% 2.00% 4.00% 1.00% 4.00% 5.00% 3.000 30.0% 20.0% 5.00 1.500
7.8% 6.6%
Book-To-Physical stock discrepancy MDWP (Machine down and production stoppage, waiting for part) COGS / Actual Sales Revenue Inventory Turns Key Performance Demand Forecast Accuracy Indicators Gross Profit Margin Customer Contract Service Level (SL%) Ship-To-Commit (All External Customer Orders) Priority 01 Orders Delivery Cycle Time (95% within 12 hours)
Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y
$m # % # % % % % %
M W W W W W W W W
7.8
When declaring your variables for cell values, positions of columns and rows, you want to make sure you are using the correct data types. If you have problem following my code below, you may want to refer my other page on creating If..Then..Else Conditional Statements and Loops Decision.
Below I give you a long list of the various Performance Indicators that are commonly used and some are the standard measurements being used across the various industries. You can study them, and decide how your people are going to effectively collect and munching raw data, setting criteria, automate analysis, and implement control plan before you want to include them in your process dashboard in addition to the KPIs I have shown you in table above. I segment them by the various business unit functions - Inventory, Order Fulfillment, Supply Chain, Procurement, Manufacturing, Production, Outsourcing, Shipping.
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Inventory
Inventory is a list for goods and materials, or those goods and materials themselves, held available in stock by a business. Inventory are held in order to manage and hide from the customer the fact that supply delay is longer than delivery delay, and also to ease the effect of imperfections in the manufacturing process that lower production efficiencies if production capacity stands idle for lack of materials.
Inventory Accuracy
Most Advanced Planning Systems calculate net inventory requirements. If the book inventory used as the basis for these calculations has a high error, the net inventory requirements generated will not reflect the true inventory needs. The inventory error should be factored into the
safety stock calculation to protect service levels from variance in inventory due to inventory count accuracy. Assertive continuous improvement programs should be in place to support a decrease in inventory count errors. The formula is: (book inventory - counted inventory)/book inventory
Inventory Value
Inventory Value = Average Unit Cost x Units of Current Inventory
4. Add up percentages: 10% + 19% = 29% which is your Inventory Carrying Rate 5. Inventory Carrying Cost = Inventory Carrying Rate X Average Inventory Value 29% X $34,000,000 = $9,860,000
Stock Cover
Stock cover is the length of time that inventory will last if current usage continues.
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Order Fulfillment
Fill Rates (Order Fill Rate, Line Item Fill Rate, Unit Item Fill Rate)
It calculates the service level between 2 parties and is a measurement of shipping performance expressed as a percentage of the total order. It calculates the amount of order lines shipped on the initial shipment versus the amount of lines ordered, and has to take into consideration the requested delivery date.
% of Backorders
The number (or percentage) of unfulfilled orders. A backorder is an unfilled customer order, or demand (immediate or past due) against an item whose current stock level is insufficient to satisfy demand. Can also measure Aged Backorders which are backorders in past-due time buckets based on the Requested Delivery Date/Requested Ship Date.
Sell Through %
It refers to the percentage of the inventory received from factory or distribution depot that is actually sold to the consumer. Percentage of units sold during a period = units sold / (units sold + on hand inventory). This can also be described as Units sold divided by Beginning Inventory Qty.
What percent of orders where shipped on or before the requested ship date. On time ship rate can be calculated on a line item, SKU, case or value basis.
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Supply chain
Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO)
It measures cash investment tied up in inventory that will impact Working Capital. A decrease is an improvement, an increase a deterioration. DIO is closely tie with Inventory Turns metric. DIO is generally good if Inventory Turns numbers are increasing. DIO = Inventory / (Net Sales / 365) Note: Many companies use Cost of Goods Sold instead of Net Sales when calculating DPO and DIO.
Scrap value %
Scrap value as a percentage of production value.
When manufacturing over or under produces against plan, either service level or inventory investment is adversely affected. Assertive continuous improvement programs should be in place to decrease the variance.
Inventory Accuracy
Most Advanced Planning Systems calculate net inventory requirements. If the book inventory used as the basis for these calculations has a high error, the net inventory requirements generated will not reflect the true inventory needs. The inventory error should be factored into the safety stock calculation to protect service levels from variance in inventory due to inventory count accuracy. Assertive continuous improvement programs should be in place to support a decrease in inventory count errors. Formula is: (book inventory - counted inventory)/book inventory
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Procurement
Procurement refers to the overall process of acquiring a product or service. Depending on the circumstances, it may include some or all of the following: identifying a need, specifying the requirements to fulfill the need, identifying potential suppliers, soliciting bids and proposals, evaluating bids and proposals, awarding contracts or purchase orders, tracking progress and ensuring compliance, taking delivery, inspecting and inventorying the deliverable, and paying the supplier.
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Outsourcing
% Actual vs. Estimated Savings
Percentage of actual or realized savings on spend against a negotiated contract vs the estimated spend determined during the sourcing initiative.
% of invoices disputed
Percentage of invoices disputed.
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Transit time
Measured by the number of days (or hours) from the time a shipment leaves your facility to the time it arrives at the customer's location. Often measured against a standard transit time quoted by the carrier for each traffic lane. Unless you are integrated into your customers' systems, you will have to rely on freight carriers to report their own performance. This is often an important component of lead time. Transit times can vary substantially, based on freight mode and carrier systems.
Freight bill accuracy Calculated by dividing the number of error-free freight bills by the total
number of freight bills in the period. Errors can include incorrect pricing, incorrect weights, incomplete information, etc. Generally measured in total and for each carrier. Formula is: [number of error-free freight bills] / [total number of freight bills]
On-time pickups
Calculated by dividing the number of pick-ups made on-time (by the freight carrier) by the total number of shipments in a period. This is an indication of freight carrier performance, and carriers' affect on your shipping operations and customer service.
Fill Rate
Calculates the service level between 2 parties, is a measure of shipping performance expressed as a percentage of the total order. It measures the amount of order lines shipped on the initial shipment versus the amount of lines ordered. This measure has to take into consideration the requested delivery date (except if the receiving party does not accept early shipments).
Empty miles
Percentage of miles (trips) that carried no inventory/freight.
Shrinkage Value
The costs associated with breakage, pilferage, and deterioration of inventories. Usually pertains to the loss of material through handling damage, theft, or neglect.
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Production
Scrap value %
Scrap value as a percentage of production value.
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Manufacturing
Utilization
Utilization is the measurement ratio of the Actual Production Output to its Design Capacity, that is required to produce one unit of output. In reality the line cannot be run continuously at its maximum Design Capacity because of the need for line maintenance, changeover, stoppages, loading, etc. What remains, after such loss times are accounted for, are called the Effective Capacity. Utilization = Actual Output/Design Capacity
Efficiency
Efficiency is the ratio of the Actual Production Output achieved to its Effective Capacity. Efficiency = Actual Output/Effective Capacity
Equipment quality
Equipment quality = Good Pieces / Total Pieces
Equipment performance
Equipment performance = Ideal Cycle Time / (Operating Time / Total Pieces) or, Equipment performance = (Total Pieces / Operating Time) / Ideal Run Rate
Equipment availability
Equipment availability = Operating Time / Planned Production Time
Takt Time
In simple words, Takt Time is the pace of production needed to meet customer demand. It is not cycle time. It is the available daily work time, taking into account the shifts worked and making allowances for planned stoppages (for planned maintenance, team briefings, breaks) divided by the anticipated daily sales rate or demand (including spare parts) plus any extras such as test parts and anticipated scrap. Takt Time = Net Available Time per Day / Customer Demand per Day
Rate of rejects
Measures the quality and uniformity of the final product.