Stock keeping unit

Last updated

In inventory management, a stock keeping unit (abbreviated as SKU, pronounced es-kay-YOO or SKEW [1] ) is the unit of measure in which the stocks of a material are managed. It is a distinct type of item for sale, [2] purchase, or tracking in inventory, [3] such as a product or service, and all attributes associated with the item type that distinguish it from other item types (for a product, these attributes can include manufacturer, description, material, size, color, packaging, and warranty terms). When a business records the inventory of its stock, it counts the quantity it has of each unit, or SKU.

Contents

SKU can also refer to a unique identifier or code, sometimes represented via a barcode for scanning and tracking, which refers to the particular stock keeping unit. These identifiers are not regulated or standardized. When a company receives items from a vendor, it has a choice of maintaining the vendor's SKU or creating its own. [4] This makes them distinct from Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), which are standard, global tracking units. The Universal Product Code (UPC), European Article Number (EAN), and Australian Product Number (APN) are special cases of GTINs.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logistics</span> Management of the flow of resources

Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption according to the needs of customers. Logistics management is a component that holds the supply chain together. The resources managed in logistics may include tangible goods such as materials, equipment, and supplies, as well as food and other consumable items.

There are many different numbering schemes for assigning nominal numbers to entities. These generally require an agreed set of rules, or a central coordinator. The schemes can be considered to be examples of a primary key of a database management system table, whose table definitions require a database design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inventory</span> Goods held for resale

Inventory or stock refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Product (business)</span> Anything that can be offered to a market

In marketing, a product is an object, or system, or service made available for consumer use as of the consumer demand; it is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer. In retailing, products are often referred to as merchandise, and in manufacturing, products are bought as raw materials and then sold as finished goods. A service is also regarded as a type of product.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cost of goods sold</span> Carrying value of goods sold during a particular period

Cost of goods sold (COGS) is the carrying value of goods sold during a particular period.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic Product Code</span> Universal identifier for physical object

The Electronic Product Code (EPC) is designed as a universal identifier that provides a unique identity for every physical object anywhere in the world, for all time. The EPC structure is defined in the EPCglobal Tag Data Standard, which is a freely available standard. The canonical representation of an EPC is a URI, namely the 'pure-identity URI' representation that is intended for use when referring to a specific physical object in communications about EPCs among information systems and business application software.

Vendor-managed inventory (VMI) is an inventory management practice in which a supplier of goods, usually the manufacturer, is responsible for optimizing the inventory held by a distributor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Price look-up code</span> Number to identify produce in grocery stores

Price look-up codes, commonly called PLU codes, PLU numbers, PLUs, produce codes, or produce labels, are a system of numbers that uniquely identify bulk produce sold in grocery stores and supermarkets. The codes have been in use since 1990, and over 1400 have been assigned. The codes are administered by the International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS), a global coalition of fruit and vegetable associations that was formed in 2001 to introduce PLU numbers globally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Part number</span> Identifier of a particular part design in engineering

A part number is an identifier of a particular part design or material used in a particular industry. Its purpose is to simplify reference that item. A part number unambiguously identifies a part design within a single corporation. Sometimes across several corporations. For example, when specifying a screw, it is easier to refer to "HSC0424PP" than saying "Hardware, screw, machine, 4-40, 3/4" long, pan head, Phillips". In this example, "HSC0424PP" is the part number. It may be prefixed in database fields as "PN HSC0424PP" or "P/N HSC0424PP". The "Part Number" term is often used loosely to refer to items or components, and it's equivalent to "Item Number", and overlaps with other terms like SKU.

Consignment is a process whereby a person gives permission to another party to take care of their property and retains full ownership of the property until the item is sold to the final buyer. It is generally done during auctions, shipping, goods transfer, or putting something up for sale in a consignment store. The owner of the goods pays the third-party a portion of the sale for facilitating the sale. Consignors maintain the rights to their property until the item is sold or abandoned. Many consignment shops and online consignment platforms have a set time limit at which an item's availability for sale expires. Within the time of contract, reductions of the price are common to promote the sale of the item, but vary by the type of item sold.

The Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is an identifier for trade items, developed by the international organization GS1. Such identifiers are used to look up product information in a database which may belong to a retailer, manufacturer, collector, researcher, or other entity. The uniqueness and universality of the identifier is useful in establishing which product in one database corresponds to which product in another database, especially across organizational boundaries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GS1</span> Organization for barcode standards

GS1 is a not-for-profit, international organization developing and maintaining its own standards for barcodes and the corresponding issue company prefixes. The best known of these standards is the barcode, a symbol printed on products that can be scanned electronically.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Article Number</span> Standard barcode system used in global trade

The International Article Number is a standard describing a barcode symbology and numbering system used in global trade to identify a specific retail product type, in a specific packaging configuration, from a specific manufacturer. The standard has been subsumed in the Global Trade Item Number standard from the GS1 organization; the same numbers can be referred to as GTINs and can be encoded in other barcode symbologies defined by GS1. EAN barcodes are used worldwide for lookup at retail point of sale, but can also be used as numbers for other purposes such as wholesale ordering or accounting. These barcodes only represent the digits 0–9, unlike some other barcode symbologies which can represent additional characters.

A unique identifier (UID) is an identifier that is guaranteed to be unique among all identifiers used for those objects and for a specific purpose. The concept was formalized early in the development of computer science and information systems. In general, it was associated with an atomic data type.

Backflush accounting is a subset of management accounting focused on types of "postproduction issuing;" It is a product costing approach, used in a Just-In-Time (JIT) operating environment, in which costing is delayed until goods are finished. Backflush accounting delays the recording of costs until after the events have taken place, then standard costs are used to work backwards to 'flush' out the manufacturing costs. The result is that detailed tracking of costs is eliminated. Journal entries to inventory accounts may be delayed until the time of product completion or even the time of sale, and standard costs are used to assign costs to units when journal entries are made. The backflushing transaction has two steps: one step of the transaction reports the produced part which serves to increase the quantity on-hand of the produced part and a second step which relieves the inventory of all the component parts. Component part numbers and quantities-per are taken from the standard bill of material (BOM). This represents a huge saving over the traditional method of a) issuing component parts one at a time, usually to a discrete work order, b) receiving the finished parts into inventory, and c) returning any unused components, one at a time, back into inventory.

A product's average price is the result of dividing the product's total sales revenue by the total units sold. When one product is sold in variants, such as bottle sizes, managers must define "comparable" units. Average prices can be calculated by weighting different unit selling prices by the percentage of unit sales (mix) for each product variant. If we use a standard, rather than an actual mix of sizes and product varieties, the result is price per statistical unit. Statistical units are also called equivalent units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vendor</span> Supplier of goods or services

In a supply chain, a vendor, supplier, provider or a seller, is an enterprise that contributes goods or services. Generally, a supply chain vendor manufactures inventory/stock items and sells them to the next link in the chain. Today, these terms refer to a supplier of any goods or service.

The NIGP Commodity/Services Code is an acronym for the National Institute of Governmental Purchasings' Commodity/Services Code. The NIGP Code is a coding taxonomy used primarily to classify products and services procured by state and local governments in North America.

Inventory management software is a software system for tracking inventory levels, orders, sales and deliveries. It can also be used in the manufacturing industry to create a work order, bill of materials and other production-related documents. Companies use inventory management software to avoid product overstock and outages. It is a tool for organizing inventory data that before was generally stored in hard-copy form or in spreadsheets.

First Expired, First Out (FEFO) is a term used in field inventory management to describe a way of dealing with the logistics of products that have a limited shelf life. These items include perishable products or consumer goods with a specified expiration date. The product with the deadline for the next intake will be the first to be served or removed from stock. FEFO is majorly used in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries where expired dates are calculated based on a batch-expired date or shelf-life time.

References

  1. "SKU | Pronunciation in English". Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved 2024-04-28.
  2. Sawaya, William J. (1986). Production and operations management. William C. Giauque. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. ISBN   0-15-571968-8. OCLC   14114818.
  3. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "SKU". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 14 Dec 2021.
  4. Roussos, George (2008). Networked RFID: Systems, Software and Services. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN   978-1-84800-153-4.