ASSESSMENT OF INVENTORY MANAGEMENT PROBLEM

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess factors that affect the inventory management practice of Gurage zone health centers. The researcher adopted descriptive and inferential study design. A stratified random sampling technique was applied to the study. Both primary and secondary sources of data were used for the study. The researcher used a sample size of 35.8 %( 222 respondents) of the target population. The researcher used questionnaire to collect data for the research. The questionnaire contained open ended questions for the purposes of group discussion for Woreda and Zonal management and closed ended questions which have five point Likert scale questions for the selected health centers informants and covered areas of factors of inventory management practice to come up with good raw data for the research. The collected data were quantitatively analyzed using statistical methods by using SPSS version 20 which was commanded to produce frequency tables, graphs, regression coefficient result, analysis of variance and model summary for effective interpretation The various factor influencing inventory management practice were broken into four major areas which of these are demand uncertainty, infrastructure , management support and procurement related procedures .The particular objective that were analyzed include; evaluation of the effects of demand uncertainty, infrastructure, management support and procurement related procedures on inventory management practice. The key findings from the study revealed that demand uncertainty, management support, infrastructure and procurement related procedures are the challenges/factors to have a proper inventory management practices on the Gurage zone health centers. The researcher recommend that the health centers management and employees, woreda health offices , zonal health department and other concerned bodies should work cooperatively to improve the overall inventory management practice by improving the challenges mentioned above. Finally, the researcher suggested that further research should be done to further explore the relationship between inventory management practice and service delivery status and how to solve the challenges of inventory management practices of the health centers.