How does inventory management strategies influence/is influenced by the design of work in enterprises?

This paper explores the linkages that exist between inventory management strategies and the design of work in enterprises. Firstly, the paper identifies the different inventory management strategies that an organisation may adopt, these include the following strategies: just-in-time, economic order quantity, strategic supplier partnership, vendor managed inventory, and activity based costing (Opoku, Abboah, & Twi, 2021). For each strategy chosen there is a linkage in how the organisation designs work to support the strategy. Mashayekhy, Y., Babaei, A., Yuan, X.-M., & Xue, A. (2022) found that increased automation within the inventory management area driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) has resulted in a shift in the workforce requirements as well as the skillset of the workforce. (Owusu-Andoh, Asante, Konney, & Ofei, 2022) further highlight that the synergy between inventory management strategy and workforce skills is mostly felt in practices like Just In Time (JIT) where coordination needs to be tight to avoid delays. (Ganesha, Aithal, & Kirubadevi, 2020) introduce another perspective to this discussion by highlighting that inventory management systems are now integrated into other enterprise systems thereby giving management the opportunity to experiment with things like pricing, customer preferences, store locations, discounts, and many other variables. This places new demands on the skillsets of workers in the inventory management space where they now need to understand the end to end customer journey as well as aspects of marketing. The paper will also explore the challenges and opportunities brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically the Work from Home culture. (Anakpo, Nqwayibana, & Mishi, 2023) highlight the impact of these changes on productivity, performance management and job design, this report will seek to understand these changes with respect to inventory management roles.