Lean manufacturing is helping producers throughout the world reduce inventories, lower labor costs, and increase their overall efficiencies. The same concepts embraced by lean manufacturing practitioners can help distributors achieve the goal of effective inventory management:

"Effective inventory management allows an organization to meet or exceed customers’ expectations of product availability with the amount of each item that will maximize net profits or minimize costs."

In this article we’ll look at three of the concepts of lean manufacturing and how they can help distributors maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their operations.