How much of your working capital is quietly sitting on a shelf right now, and how much production time was lost last quarter waiting on a part that ran out? Both questions point to the same discipline: inventory planning and control. This course from the Arab British Fellowship Training Academy tackles that discipline head-on, giving materials and warehouse professionals a working toolkit rather than just theory.

Rather than starting from definitions, the course opens with the cost side of inventory — what shortages and overstocking actually do to a budget — before moving into forecasting, reorder logic, safety stock, and the digital systems that keep modern warehouses under control. Graduates leave with a practical framework for keeping stock levels lean, accurate, and aligned with real demand.

Who Should Attend

• Stock and warehouse teams, including supervisors.
• Staff in procurement, supply and supply-chain roles.
• Production and material planning officers.
• Anyone handling inventory decisions who wants a stronger technical foundation.

What Participants Will Take Away

• A working grasp of inventory planning and management fundamentals.
• Practical methods for forecasting material requirements accurately.
• Control systems that prevent both shortages and overstocking.
• The ability to read inventory KPIs and act on them.
• Familiarity with the digital tools used in modern stock management.

Module 1: The True Cost of Getting Inventory Wrong

• Storage, ordering, shortage and overstocking costs.
• Economic order quantity (EOQ) as a way to minimize total cost.
• FIFO, LIFO and weighted-average valuation, and their effect on profit and asset value.

Module 2: Understanding What You're Managing

• The role of inventory in operational continuity and its strategic weight.
• Raw materials, work-in-progress, finished goods, spare parts and strategic stock.
• Classifying inventory items by usage and value.

Module 3: Setting Thresholds and Building a Safety Net

• Minimum, maximum and reorder point calculations.
• Determining safety stock levels and balancing cost with operational security.
• Rapid-response policies when consumption spikes unexpectedly.

Module 4: Forecasting and Reading Consumption Patterns

• Quantitative and qualitative forecasting techniques, including mathematical models and expert judgement.
• Fixed consumption-rate and historical-data approaches to estimation.
• Comparing actual versus estimated consumption and identifying fast- and slow-moving items.

Module 5: Material Requirements Planning (MRP) in Practice

• The MRP concept and its role in cutting waste.
• Bills of materials, order scheduling and the data MRP requires.
• MRP's relationship with procurement and production.

Module 6: Monitoring, Records and Performance

• Real-time versus periodic monitoring, and the role of manual inventory cards.
• Organizing item cards and maintaining accurate movement records.
• Turnover rate, service and availability levels, shortage and spoilage rates, and periodic or surprise counts.

Module 7: Technology, Supply Chain and Sustainability

• WMS features, RFID, barcodes and IoT for real-time tracking.
• Integrating inventory management with the supply chain and balancing demand with supply.
• Smart analytics and machine learning, and linking inventory practices to circular-economy and waste-reduction goals.