Supply chain veteran's practical guide: How do you manage inventory age and dead stock? The full process from standards to hands-on practice (Part 1)

Supply chain veteran's practical guide: How do you manage inventory age and dead stock? The full process from standards to hands-on practice (Part 1)

Anyone working in supply chain, planning, procurement, production, or warehousing runs into the same eternal headache: inventory age keeps getting longer, dead stock keeps piling up, and profit gets slowly eaten away by inventory.

A lot of companies do have inventory rules on the books. The problem is the standards aren't unified, the process never gets implemented, and responsibilities aren't clear. In the end inventory just keeps stacking up, with write-downs, scrap, and tied-up cash, and when you do the books at year-end it's all hidden losses.

This piece lays out inventory age classification standards, the causes of dead stock, source control, and the handling logic in a way that's common across the industry and can be put to use directly. It's suitable for copying straight into a company's internal process, and also for professionals who want to learn this systematically.

1. First, unify the definitions: common industry inventory age and dead stock definitions

A lot of internal arguing comes down to one thing: nobody has clearly defined what counts as dead stock. Below is the common classification used in manufacturing, chemicals, fast-moving consumer goods, and trading, and you can write it straight into your SOP.

1. Inventory age ranges and risk levels

• 0–30 days: normal turnover inventory. High demand match, healthy liquidity.
• 30–90 days: at-risk inventory. Turnover has clearly slowed, so it must go into focused monitoring with a weekly review.