Question

What are the activities that do not add value to the product or service? What is Kanban? Is it necessary to implement kanban to implement JIT or vice versa?
What is supplier controlled inventory? What is consignment inventory? In the supplier-controlled and consignment inventory, who owns the product?
What is a barcode? What is RFID?
What is inventory software? What is the purpose of inventory software?

Answer 1

The activities that do not add value to the product or service are rework activities,activities where time is wasted such as waiting time,Travelling time, Inventory holding time,Turnover times.manpower shortages etc. All these work do not make a product or service better and hence are non value activities.

Kanban is a visualization tool which improves the flow of process and inventory across the system. It is a visual aid in tracking inventories and WIP across the work flow.It helps in reducing wastages in system by preveting the build up of excess inventory on the system flow.

Kanban is necessary to be implemented to improve JIT since it helps in reducing the build up od excess inventory and uses the inventory as per order requirements. Kanban is one of the prerequisites for JIT while it is not necessary to implement JIT for kanban.

Supplier controlled inventory is the method of inventory management in which the buyer's inventory is managed by the supplier rather than the buyer himself.Therefore, this reduces the ordering cost for the buyer while it reduces inventory holding cost for the supplier. For eg. A retail store can let the supplier manage the inventory of his stock in the retails store.Therefore, the supplier will stock the inventory himself in case of less stock without any order needed from the retail store. This will prevent stock out and ordering costs will be reduced for retailer whereas supplier can stock inventory at the retailers place.

Consignment inventory is that method of inventory where a buyer buys from a supplier but pays only when the products are sold. Thus the goods are owned by the consignor till the time consignee sells them and pays them.

In both the cases, inventory is owned by the supplier.

A bar code is a method of capturing data in a image form consisting of black lines of varying width which are arranged parallely. Bar codes can contain information such as serial no, website links, service number etc. They are mostly used to track products.

RFID or radio frequency ID is the method of encoding information digitally in RFID cards or labels. They use radio frequencies to read and write the data in the cards. RFID's are also used to track the products.

An inventory software is a software which keeps track of all the inventory in the system. It keeps tracks of orders, deliveries, work in progress inventory, warehouse inventory etc and helps in optimizing the flow of inventory and reduces the inventory holding costs.The purpose of inventory software is that it helps in managing the flow of inventory efficiently and reduces a lot of manual work.