ABSTRACT
Despite global efforts to tackle the issue of sustainability, not many studies have been conducted in respect to sustainability throughout the supply chain, particularly ones concerning Excess Inventory. Unfortunately, the cosmetic industry is no exception to this despite being one of the largest supply chains in the UAE. In addition to this, organizations constantly disregard their biggest wasted asset throughout their supply chain cycles, through Excess Inventory. Once goods are not being sold for a prolonged period of time, they will be continuously handled and moved around whether it is from the factory to the warehouse or back from the customer to the warehouse without ever being sold. The goods eventually become obsolete which means more harmful waste practices to get rid of the excess goods and increased costs. Although, the factors contributing to excess inventory are widely spread, there is no rating scheme providing us with the most occurring factors to the least occurring factors, to give cosmetic organizations a benchmark of where to begin when tackling excess inventory. This chapter discusses the harmful impacts of retaining excess inventory within a Supply Chain Cycle in general and identifies the major factors that contribute to excess inventory within the cosmetic industry in the UAE, by adopting AHP analysis which due to its multiple independent assessors results in superior form of inter-rater agreement level, i.e. inter-rater reliability.
