The Effect of Inventory Management on Organizational Performance Among Textile Manufacturing Firms in Kenya

The purpose of the study was to analyze the effect of inventory management on supply chain performance in terms of profitability, reliability, cost, responsiveness, flexibility and asset management efficiency of textile manufacturing firms in Kenya. The study was guided by the inventory management theory. The study adopted the convergent parallel mixed methods design. The study targeted a total of 196 respondents drawn from employees of procurement departments and departmental heads of respective 15 textile manufacturing industries operating in Nairobi County. The sample size was therefore 139 respondents. Stratified and simple random sampling methods were used to select employees of procurement departments from their respective textile firms. Questionnaires and interview schedules were used to gather the data from primary sources. The study applied the use of both qualitative and quantitative data which was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS Version 22). Inferential statistics using hierarchical multiple regression and Correlation analysis was applied to test the relationship between the variable and formulated hypothesis. The final analyzed results were presented using tables, graphs and charts. The study established that textile manufacturing firms in Kenya have adoption of inventory management as a factor of supply chain influencing performance. The study concludes that inventory management possess the potential of positively influencing performance of Textile firms in and therefore recognizes the importance of inventory management in the supply chain and have put clear mechanisms in place and invested in current material flow systems to oversee smooth and transparent material flow that can be tracked along a supply chain.