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21
Inventory Control Basics
21.1 INTRODUCTION
Inventory amount and size decisions are traditionally driven by the costs of maintaining inventories
and costs of being out of stock. Operations managers seek to maintain inventory levels that minimize
the total cost of both.
In this section, we discuss closed-loop inventory control. The approaches discussed here are
relatively unsophisticated. There is a large amount of information available in other academic texts
along with consultative materials available in industry. We will discuss certain aspects of inventory
control theory so that the impact that RFID technologies can be recognized.