Military essentiality in inventory management

Abstract

The essentiality rankings of stock items is a universal unsolved problem in inventory management. The role played by essentiality factors in mathematical inventory control models is discussed. Several methods for item essentiality ranking in present military use are described. A proposal is set forth to accomplish military essentiality ranking by statistical examination of the numerical priorities assigned to requisitions for each item. The characteristics of the U. S. Navy priority system which give justification to this proposal are pointed out. A limited experiment is described wherein the essentiality rankings produced by the proposed system are compared with these produced by Stanford Research Institute's essentiality formula in use at the Electronics Supply Office. The experiment, involving a small homogeneous sample of electronic tube items, indicated agreement (in the sense of positive correlation) between the results produced by the two systems. A more com- plete experiment with a more heterogeneous sample of items is recommended.