📦 Unit 15 — Paper 2

Unit 15 — Stock and Asset Management

Unit 15 covers how manufacturing organisations manage their physical resources — from raw materials and components to machinery and equipment. Effective stock and asset management keeps production running smoothly, reduces waste and controls costs. You'll study inventory systems, maintenance strategies and the tools used to track and optimise the resources that engineering businesses depend on.

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Some topics covered in this unit

Inventory management systems — FIFO, LIFO, just-in-time (JIT) and their impact on production and storage costs

Stock control methods — reorder points, safety stock, economic order quantity (EOQ) and stock-taking procedures

Asset registers and lifecycle management — how organisations track equipment, manage depreciation and plan replacements

Maintenance strategies — planned preventive maintenance, reactive maintenance and condition-based monitoring

Lean and waste reduction — minimising overproduction, excess inventory and unnecessary movement of materials

Supply chain reliability — managing supplier relationships, lead times and the impact of stock-outs on production

Sample question

Inventory Management

Which inventory management approach aims to receive materials only when they are needed for production, minimising storage costs?

FIFO

Just-in-time (JIT)

Safety stock

Economic order quantity

✓ Correct answer: B — Just-in-time (JIT). Just-in-time (JIT) is an inventory strategy where materials are ordered and received only when needed for production. This minimises storage costs and waste but requires reliable suppliers and accurate demand forecasting. It was developed by Toyota and is widely used in lean manufacturing.