Inventory

Inventory, in the context of economics and resource management, principally refers to the amount of goods or raw materials in the possession of a manufacturing or distribution organization. While the original emphasis was principally business-related and concerned with the cost of capital (i.e., capital expenditure or CAPEX), the idea has broadened considerably, to include goods moving in a supply chain, from the producer to the inventory holder, and from the inventory holder to recipients.

Supply chain management is part of the discipline of logistics, originally a military concept but now widely generalized in industrialized management &mdash; the commander of military logistics in the Gulf War, LTG Gus Pagonis, retired from the U.S. Army and went immediately to work for the major retailer, Sears Roebuck.