An inter-industry comparison of inventory management against disaster risks: evidence from Japan / Shinnosuke Hara

Measures against disasters such as earthquakes are one of the most important tasks of companies all over the world. Especially in cases of the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011 and the Kumamoto Earthquake of 2016, factories producing high specificity parts suffered severe damage, as they could no longer supply final products. The occurrence of natural disasters is an interruption in the supply chain. Some studies on accidental or exceptional events such as natural disasters have finally come about after the Tohoku Earthquake. Recently, the effectiveness and necessity of management accounting have been pointed out from the perspective of providing information for formulating and updating business continuity plans in the context of reconstruction after disasters and returning to normalcy. While accounting research is relatively lacking, research on handling of risks due to disasters from a similar problem such as implementation of inventory management can be seen in different fields. In this paper we review not only accounting but interdisciplinary research, and focus on topics of inventory management and lean production methods that have similarities with management accounting research. A low inventory level associated with lean production can lead to increased vulnerability to disasters. To investigate implementation of inventory management in companies, we quantitatively analyzed time series trends of inventory and identified the industry in which features of an increase or decrease are seen.