Book excerpt: Best Practice in Inventory Management 3E offers a simple, entirely jargon-free and yet comprehensive introduction to key aspects of inventory management. Good management of inventory enables companies to improve their customer service, cash flow and profitability. This text outlines the basic techniques, how and where to apply them, and provides advice to ensure they work to provide the desired effect in practice. With an unrivalled balance between qualitative and quantitative aspects of inventory control, experienced consultant Tony Wild portrays the many ways in which stock management is more nuanced than simple "number crunching" and mathematical modelling. This long-awaited new edition has been substantially and thoroughly updated. The product of decades of experience and expertise in the field, Best Practice in Inventory Management 3E provides students and professionals, even those with no prior experience in the area, an unbiased and honest picture of what it takes to effectively manage stocks in a firm.