Customer‐aligned inventory strategies: agility maxims

Traditionally, aggregate inventory realignment has tended to be a reactive response to crisis signals revealed by financial performance measurements. Symptoms and problems are usually confounded, while corrective actions are localized with less than adequate customer connectivity. This article links inventory requirements to customer requirements for response, quality, and their benefit‐to‐cost ratio by focusing on reduction of valueless time, valueless activity, and valueless variance in business processes. Interestingly, what satisfies customers can also efficiently align inventory. Several maxims are introduced throughout the paper to align the purpose and significance of inventory to a customer context.