Template:Inventory

Inventory

Headline: Usually a second-order waste, where there are bottlenecks on your production line and half-processed inventory stacks up waiting for the next step, meaing the real waste here is waiting. But time is money, so the longer the overall negoation process, the more expensive the inventory.

In the context of contract negotiation, inventory is coterminous with waiting — not being a bearer instrument, a legal contract has no intrinsic value even when completed — it is what you do with it that creates the risk and reward — so having a hopper overflowing with half-completed credit support annexes does not of itself represent a large waste. But the fact that they are stacked up waiting for an answer for someone or other, be it the client, trading, risk stretches out the production time.