Slow-Moving Inventory
Definition
Stock that sells or is consumed at a much lower rate than expected, sitting in the warehouse far longer than average. It still has demand, unlike dead stock, but turns too slowly to justify its inventory level.
In Practice
Slow movers are typically flagged by thresholds such as fewer than a set number of turns per year or more than a set number of days since last movement. They occupy the uncomfortable middle ground: real but sparse demand makes them expensive to stock yet risky to cut, especially for service parts where a stockout can idle a customer's equipment.
Planning slow movers well means abandoning normal-distribution assumptions. Demand arrives in infrequent lumps, so techniques like Croston-style intermittent demand estimation, order-up-to levels of small integers, and stocking centrally rather than at every location work better than standard safety stock formulas.
Example: a machinery OEM finds a gasket selling 6 units a year spread across four warehouses, each holding 5 units. Consolidating to 8 units at one central DC maintains next-day availability by courier while cutting stock on that SKU by 60 percent, a pattern repeated across 3,000 tail SKUs.
Related Calculators
Related Terms
Inventory with no recorded sales or usage over an extended period and no realistic expectation of future demand. It occupies space and capital while generating no return.
Excess InventoryStock held above what is needed to meet forecast demand plus planned buffers over a defined horizon. It is inventory that current plans cannot justify, even if the item itself still sells.
Days Sales of InventoryThe average number of days inventory sits before being sold, calculated as average inventory divided by cost of goods sold, multiplied by 365. Also called days inventory outstanding.
SKU RationalizationThe systematic review of the product portfolio to prune SKUs that add complexity without sufficient sales, margin, or strategic value. It reduces the long tail that consumes inventory, space, and planning effort.