The Fifth Column—On Doing Good Things and Dumb Things in Production & Inventory Control

After years of waiting, Operations Research finally printed an article on inventory control that could meet the standards of the journal of the American Production and Inventory Control Society. I suggest that Mr. Bishop's article, [Bishop, Jack L., Jr. 1974. Experience with a successful system for forecasting and inventory control. Oper. Res.22 (6) 1224–1231.], “Experience with a Successful System for Forecasting and Inventory Control” be made required reading for anyone who still is teaching the square-root formula for the Economic Order Quantity with a straight face.

Also presented is an example of doing some dumb things first in production and inventory control, where amazing improvements in operating methods could have been achieved by asking simple questions that nobody in the plant would dare to ask.