A decision support system to define new inventory management policies in companies transitioning towards data-driven decision-making

Information and Digital Technologies (IDT) not only help connecting processes and making them more efficient, they also increase one’s visibility over them, by the intensive data creation and collection associated to their use. This data, when properly treated, can be quite revealing of a company’s performance status and what future direction it seems to be heading. Data transformed into information is a powerful tool that must be used to support decision-making. Unfortunately, many companies have not yet mastered this transformation and plenty of others have not even acknowledged its potential. This article describes a case study carried out at a company responsible for the production of car seat covers, aiming to transition towards a data-driven decision making mindset. Revising their raw materials inventory management policies was their first step towards this goal, which led to the creation of a Decision Support System (DSS) that analyses the trade-offs between inventory-related costs and achieved service levels, considering the separate and joint use of safety stocks and safety time buffers. This paper presents the proposed DSS and illustrates its application to a small set of raw materials from the case study organisation.