Inventory

Inventory, in the context of economics and resource management, principally refers to the amount of goods or raw materials in the possession of a manufacturing or distribution organization. While the original emphasis was principally business-related and concerned with the cost of capital (i.e., capital expenditure or CAPEX), the idea has broadened considerably, to include goods moving in a supply chain, from the producer to the inventory holder, and from the inventory holder to recipients.

Supply chain management is part of the discipline of logistics, originally a military concept but now widely generalized in industrialized management — the commander of military logistics in the Gulf War, LTG Gus Pagonis, retired from the U.S. Army and went immediately to work for the major retailer, Sears Roebuck.

Inventory is also a concern of accounting, both to consider the value of inventoried material as part of the worth of a firm, but also to define the auditing of actual inventory.