Introduction to Supply Chain ManagementProduction and InventoryInventory plays a very important role in today's business world. Businesses need to maintain some type of inventory to cover supply and demand uncertainties. Inventory must be carefully monitored to ensure there is just the right amount and not an excess. Expiry-dated inventory must be monitored carefully to avoid spoilage. Inventory control is a very important issue and companies use many different ways to monitor it. One way to do this is to put the factory online to facilitate inventory control. The factory is probably one of the most important areas of a manufacturing plant. There are many things that happen in the factory and any problem in this process could potentially spell disaster. Most manufacturing facilities strive to successfully implement lean manufacturing in their factories. Lean manufacturing is the practice of spending resources for one purpose, the end customer. Anything else in this process that is not intended for the end customer is considered waste and therefore eliminated. Toyota has implemented an online system called Manufacturing Execution System to assist the lean manufacturing process in the factory. Second; (Marketing Decision Support Systems, Inc, 2009) By making factory activity visible through the use of the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) and measuring part flow times on a continuous basis, the factory has a baseline from which to identify areas that need improvement and the system to demonstrate those improvements. So, as we can see, the Manufacturing Execution System is benefiting the inventory process activities in Toyota by doing... middle of the paper... fact about the fact that the war zone is the same as the factory reiterates the importance that information technology plays into inventory control and how it can benefit anyone who chooses to use it.Works CitedBrousell.d. (2005, October) The Factory: Ripe for RFID. Manage automation. Retrieved April 7, 2011, from.http://www.managingautomation.com/maonline/magazine/read/view/The_FactoryFloor_Ripe_for_RFID_5439490Crittenden,s. (2005, May-June) Marine Corps Munitions Information Technology. PB 700-05-03, volume 37, number 3. Retrieved April 6, 2011, from.http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/MayJun05/ammo.htmlMDSS-Machine performance. (2009), Lean manufacturing through factory innovation. Retrieved April 4, 2011, from.http://articles.smashits.com/articles/technology-and-science/154247/lean-manufacturing-through-factory-floor-innovation.html