BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
In this monograph an inventory is deemed to be one or more items of a physical
nature en route from the primary source to the final customer and not currently
undergoing any form of transformation. Thus at one end of the spectrum coal in the
ground is not viewed as an inventory whereas coal which has been mined and is held
at the colliery is. At the other end of the spectrum inventory management will be
presumed to apply until an order placed by a household is satisfied. On this assumption
a stock of oil at a power station would be viewed as an inventory but not oil
stored by a householder for his central heating system (although many of the implications
are common to both cases).