Inventory Control

Theft in Inventory Control
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The primary rationale behind engagement in any commercial activity is the realization of fiscal profit. This is often the case for both entrepreneurship for the provision of goods and services. Therefore, it is highly imperative for any entrepreneur to be able to trace all their factors of production and related input from the initial stages to actual delivery to the final consumer. One of the techniques through which this accountability is attainable is through the proper deployment of the phenomenon of inventory control. This is where; the company employs mechanisms to ensure the highest possible utilization of its inventory.
The information obtainable from inventory control is potentially beneficial to a firm in various ways. These include that; the firm is able to predict its inventory demand patterns by simply studying their existing demand patterns. Also, the firm is able to establish its running costs. Inventory control also enables a firm’s management to establish a cycle for demand, affording them an insight into what to procure and when.
More often than not, inventory control is done through the deployment of inventory control systems. These are used to ensure maximum utilisation of inventory while providing consumer satisfaction simultaneously. However, one of the means through which the success of an inventory control system may be undermined is through theft. This theft need not be of simple misappropriation of commodities but also interference with the inventory control systems to conceal any dubious or underhand engagements by persons in charge.

One of the forms which theft from a firm using inventory control systems may take is through the unwarranted access and modification of the primary database responsible for inventory control. Such unwarranted access may allow the perpetrator an opportunity to manipulate stock figures and other quantitative attributes of the business. An individual who has such access may then proceed to falsify the turnover, creating a scenario of a surplus input to cater for a falsified demand. This surplus is then inexplicably misappropriated causing the firm to incur losses (Morton et al. 2015).
Such theft can be curbed by a zealous application of regulations, which restrict access of uncleared individuals to such modifying functionality of the inventory control system. The firm’s management should ensure that persons who have unrestricted access to inventory control systems are trustworthy or are otherwise unlikely to engage in stock-theft. In the alternative, firms may ensure users of the inventory control systems leave a digital trail of action to ensure accountability.

References
Morton, J., Cambiaghi, R., & Radcliffe, N. (2015). Inventory management requires an end-to-end approach: our consulting team defines the key concepts of inventory management and elaborate on the decisions and cross-functional collaboration required to be more effective. Logistics management (Highlands Ranch, Colo.: 2002).