Critical to most organizations in any sector of the economy is the control of material flow from suppliers to customers. The strategic importance of this area, often referred to as Supply Chain Management, is today fully recognized by top management as well as academia. The total investment in inventories is enormous, and the control of capital tied up in raw material, work-in-progress, and finished goods offers, in general, a huge potential for improvement. Scientific methods for production and inventory control can give a significant competitive advantage. Inventory Control deals with different approaches and models that can be used when developing inventory management systems and practices. Today, most companies can realize large savings through improved production and inventory management and one purpose of this book is to describe and explain scientific techniques and hence support and simplify implementation in practice. Another purpose is that the book should be useful as a textbook in various university Courses. Inventory Control satisfies both of these purposes because it covers the very recent advances in inventory theory. For example, new techniques for multi-echelon inventory systems and Roundy's 98 percent approximation are covered, as well as more traditional approaches for forecasting, lot sizing, and determination of safety stocks and reorder points. Other important topics covered are coordinated replenishments of different items and multi-stage ordering systems which include reorder point policies, KANBAN policies and Material Requirements Planning. A thorough understanding of such models and approaches is a prerequisite to successfully applying modern inventory control techniques. The book concludes with a chapter on various practical issues in connection with industrial implementation.