Sales and Operation Planning Model to Improve Inventory Management in Peruvian SMEs

Currently, most Peruvian SMEs are growing in the informal sector, thus they fail to establish their processes correctly or to have adequate inventory management. This has become a critical factor for their development, causing both economic and structural problems. On the other hand, there is a lack of research on inventory management in service companies. Therefore, a model is proposed for managing the inventories of service companies in the industrial machinery rental sector based on the Sales Operation Planning (SOP) tool. This model is based on a maturity model allowing the company to evaluate its current situation and identify the necessary requirements to be able to scale up SOP development in the company. The proposed model was implemented in a case study in Lima-Peru where the results obtained indicate that the inventory management was considerably improved, achieving an adequate SOP level. Thus, this model becomes a high value tool that reveals the actions needed to reach the ideal SOP level.