# Capital and Inventory in Supply Chain Management

## Inventory as Frozen Capital

Inventory is working capital immobilised in physical form. Every unit of
stock sitting in a warehouse represents capital that has been deployed but
not yet returned. The cash-to-cash cycle — the time between paying a
supplier and receiving payment from a customer — determines how much
working capital a business must hold at any moment. A long cycle requires
more capital; a short cycle requires less.

This relationship makes inventory management inseparable from capital
management. Decisions about how much stock to hold, where to hold it, and
in what form are simultaneously decisions about how to deploy scarce capital.
Excess inventory does not merely incur storage costs; it has an opportunity
cost equal to the return that capital could earn in its next best use.

## Just-in-Time Inventory

Just-in-time (JIT) inventory management is the practice of receiving goods
from suppliers only as they are needed in the production process or for
customer fulfilment, thereby minimising the volume of inventory held at any
moment. JIT was developed in the Japanese automotive industry and achieved
its most influential form at Toyota, where it became part of the Toyota
Production System.

The goal of JIT is to eliminate inventory as a buffer. Where traditional
manufacturing used inventory to absorb variability in supply and demand,
JIT addresses variability directly — through reliable supplier relationships,
short production runs, and rapid changeover. The capital released from
inventory reduction is the primary financial justification for the
substantial coordination investments JIT requires.

JIT succeeds when supply chains are stable, geographically concentrated,
and have high-quality supplier relationships. It fails when exposed to
supply shocks, as the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and the 2020–2022 global
supply chain disruptions demonstrated: the same lean buffers that minimise
capital in stable conditions amplify vulnerability in unstable ones.

## Safety Stock and Reserve Capacity

Safety stock is inventory held in excess of expected demand to buffer
against uncertainty. It is a form of capital deliberately kept unproductive
in order to preserve operational continuity. The optimal safety stock level
balances the cost of holding excess inventory against the cost of stockouts —
lost sales, production stoppages, and damaged customer relationships.

The existence of safety stock reflects a fundamental trade-off in supply
chain design: capital efficiency versus operational resilience. A supply
chain optimised purely for capital efficiency holds no safety stock, but
collapses at the first supply disruption. A supply chain optimised for
resilience holds substantial safety stock, but earns a low return on
capital employed.

## Working Capital Optimisation

Working capital optimisation is the systematic management of the
cash-to-cash cycle to reduce the amount of capital tied up in operations
at any point. The primary levers are: reducing inventory levels (JIT, VMI),
shortening the receivables cycle (faster collection from customers), and
lengthening the payables cycle (slower payment to suppliers).

Large buyers — particularly major retailers and platform companies — use
their market power to extend payment terms to suppliers to 60, 90, or 120
days while collecting from customers within days. This transfers the
financing burden of working capital to the supply chain without reducing
the buyer's operational requirements. The result is an effective subsidy
from suppliers (often smaller and more capital-constrained) to buyers
(typically larger and better-capitalised).
