Do inventory management practices affect economic performance? An empirical evaluation of the machine tool SMEs in Bangalore

Rajeev, N (2007) Do inventory management practices affect economic performance? An empirical evaluation of the machine tool SMEs in Bangalore. In: IEEE International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, DEC 02-05, 2007, Singapore.

PDF getPDF.pdf - Published Version Restricted to Registered users only Download (379kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Inventory management (IM) has a decisive role in the enhancement of manufacturing industry's competitiveness. Therefore, major manufacturing industries are following IM practices with the intention of improving their performance. However, the effort to introduce IM in SMEs is very limited due to lack of initiation, expertise, and financial constraints. This paper aims to provide a guideline for entrepreneurs in enhancing their IM performance, as it presents the results of a survey based study carried out for machine tool Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in Bangalore. Having established the significance of inventory as an input, we probed the relationship between IM performance and economic performance of these SMEs. To the extent possible all the factors of production and performance indicators were deliberately considered in pure economic terms. All economic performance indicators adopted seem to have a positive and significant association with IM performance in SMEs. On the whole, we found that SMEs which are IM efficient are likely to perform better on the economic front also and experience higher returns to scale.

Item Type:	Conference Paper
Publisher:	IEEE
Additional Information:	Copyright 2007 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the IEEE.
Department/Centre:	Division of Interdisciplinary Sciences > Management Studies
Date Deposited:	25 Mar 2010 11:10
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:57
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/26335

Actions (login required)

View Item