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ASP, The Art and Science of Practice: Recoupling Inventory Control Research and Practice: Guidelines for Achieving Synergy

Operations and Decision Technologies, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, 1309 East 10th Street, Bloomington, Indiana 47405
Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853
vtiwari{at}indiana.edu
sg337{at}cornell.edu

With the widening disconnect between inventory-control research and practice, people debate the value of incremental theory building. While practitioners make decisions in a complex and uncoordinated environment, researchers often adopt a simplistic environment for the sake of rigorous analysis. The stakeholders’ mismatched objectives and motivations may cause this lack of synergy. Controlling and reducing this disconnect would benefit both practitioners and researchers. The existing empirical analysis of companies’ business improvements based on academic inventory-management theories is inconclusive. Even so, some businesses have successfully implemented inventory theory; however, in most cases, they have greatly modified the inventory models developed by academics. The additional effort required testifies to the gap between inventory-control research and practice. As most businesses do not benefit directly from published research, increasing researchers’ collaboration with organizations that transform inventory-control research into implementable real-world solutions is one way of reducing the disconnect.

Key Words: inventory–production; applications; professional; OR/MS philosophy