Patent ID: 8515834

Claim:
An inventory control system for determining a target inventory level of at least one component of a product, comprising: a computer readable medium, comprising: component usage data indicative of a magnitude of at least one of historical consumption of the at least one component during a time period and forecasted consumption of the at least one component during a time period; and a target inventory module that is employable to determine a plurality of target inventory levels for the at least one component at least in part by analyzing the component usage data, the target inventory module including computer readable instructions that are operable to: sum a portion of the component usage data for a plurality of at least partially non-overlapping time periods that are each equal in duration to a supplier lead-time period for the at least one component to create lead-time usage data, wherein each one of said plurality of at least partially non-overlapping time periods corresponds with a time period that is at least partially different from time periods corresponding with each of the other ones of said plurality of at least partially non-overlapping time periods, and wherein for each one of said plurality of at least partially non overlapping time periods, the lead-time usage data comprises one of a plurality of lead-time usage data points that corresponds with a total summed amount of said portion of the component usage data for the time period to provide a corresponding lead-time bucket; and determine the plurality of target inventory levels from the lead-time usage data, wherein each of the target inventory levels indicates an inventory level of the at least one component for use in generating additional orders of the at least one component; a processor that is operable to employ the computer readable instructions to determine the plurality of target inventory levels; and a display module that is operable to provide at least one graphical representation indicative of at least one of the plurality of target inventory levels, component usage data corresponding with the at least one component, and lead-time usage data, as a function of time.