Characterization of production-inventory systems in the Hungarian industry

The paper reports the main characteristics of the production-inventory systems of Hungarian industrial companies. After a brief discussion of the general economic background some results of a survey are provided. A questionnaire developed from an international project aimed to carry out cross-national comparison was used. The results discussed here will be part of this project. The main conclusion is that the general character and relatively low level of development of the production-inventory systems in Hungary are direct consequences of the specific environmental challenges companies in the country must face. The level of production-inventory management can be-and should be-raised considerably but attempts aimed to improve the situation can be successful only if the environmental conditions are appropriately taken into consideration. More advanced systems with a chance of successful implementation must utilize many conceptual and methodological elements of the internationally known integrated systems efficiently operated in the Western world but efforts to simply copying them would definitely lead to failure.