A Conceptual Framework for Inventory Management: Focusing on Low-Consumption Items

This article evaluates the premise of demand adherence to normal distribution in inventory management models, showing that this can lead to significant distortions, mainly to stock control of very low and low consumption items. The article thus proposes a framework to help managers determine the best stock policy to be adopted given product demand characteristics. The article also presents the use of such a framework in a case study, in an attempt to illustrate the benefits of adopting probability density functions that are more adequate to product demand characteristics, in terms of total costs of stocks.