Optimization of soft beverage inventory managementin practice for SMEs : A case study of JN Ltd. In China

Introduction: Nowadays beverage companies must focus on maintaining healthy finished goods inventory stocks in order to be able to decrease inventory costs, meet customer requirements and to obtain competitive advantage. However many beverage SME don’t have an accurate planning and forecasting to manufacturing inventories. Therefore they often face the problem of optimization in inventory management due to several different reasons. As a result, company loses its competitiveness. Thus, there is a need to coordinate Inventory activities of beverage SMEs to improve inventories’ planning. The purpose of this study is to analyze how inventory management is organized in a small Chinese beverage company. Frame of reference: This research is based on the theoretical framework relates with Inventory Management (IM) and Retailer-managed inventory (RMI), vendor-managed inventory (VMI) and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR). Empirical Data were collected through personal interviews and organization documents. Methodology: The research strategy for this paper is a single case study. This strategy allows investigating topic in its real life context. The inductive approach is used for this research based on qualitative data. The major source of data collection was semistructured interviews and the company's documents. For analyzing data categorization approach was applied. Conclusion: The study found that inventory management theories presented in scientific literatures are used in practice. To achieve better inventory management for beverage SMEs, the authors summarize four importance parameters based on literatures and findings. The authors also provide some suggestions based on the importance parameters in the conclusion to optimize the case company’s inventory management