Scientific control of materials should serve the following purposes:
- To provide continuous flow of required materials, parts and components for efficient and uninterrupted flow of production.
- To minimize investment in inventories keeping in view operating requirements.
- To provide for efficient store of materials so that inventories are protected from loss by fire and theft and handling time and cost are kept at a minimum.
- To keep surplus and obsolete items to minimum.
It might seem obvious that inventory control is efficient as long as material level is going down. Materials should increase or decrease in amount and time as related to sales requirements and production schedules.
Responsibility for control of materials is that of the top management, though decisions in this regard might well be based upon the combined judgment of the production manager, controller, the sales manager and the purchasing manager. This is desired in view of the financial considerations involved in the problem and also because of need for coordinating the different kinds of materials and conflicting view points of different departments. For example, sales manager, purchasing executive and production manager usually favor, though for different reasons, the policy of carrying larger amount of stock whereas the financial manager will prefer to keep investment in material at the lowest possible level. However, in a large number of organizations material control is generally made the specific responsibility of purchasing department.