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Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing vocabulary · Inventory and Materials

Safety stock

Meaning in industrial engineering & manufacturing, with examples

nounCore term

In industrial engineering & manufacturing, safety stock means: Extra stock kept on top of normal needs to protect against unexpected demand or supplier delays.

In Turkish: emniyet stoğu, güvenlik stoğu

How it is used

Planners set, calculate and review safety stock, often based on the variation in demand and lead time. Too much ties up cash and space; too little risks stopping the line. It is also called buffer stock.

Example sentences

  1. We keep two weeks of safety stock for the imported chips.

  2. Safety stock for this item was set years ago and nobody has reviewed it since.

Common collocations

  • safety stock level
  • hold safety stock
  • calculate safety stock
  • dip into safety stock
  • reorder pointThe stock level at which a new order must be placed so that the material arrives before you run out. Often shortened to ROP.
  • inventoryAll the materials and products a company holds: raw materials, parts, work in progress and finished goods waiting to be sold.
  • lead timeThe total time between the start of a process, such as receiving an order, and its end, such as delivering the product to the customer.
  • demand forecastAn estimate of how many units customers will order in future periods, based on past sales, customer plans and market information.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Inventory and Materials

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