A manufacturing system uses sales forecasts to plan production. It uses the production plan to determine raw material needs and then uses the material needs to schedule purchases. This ultimately leads to reduced inventory costs. Which of the following is being used to reduce the inventory cost?
a) linkages
b) margins
c) competitive strategy
d) support activities

Linkages is the process of combining data from different sources to determine important relationships between variables. In business this process is particularly useful in discovering important relationship between different business resources. Once a relationship has been determined, a process of utilizing this resources effectively can then be formulated to enable resource optimization.

2. Margins

A profit margin in business can be defined as the measure of a company's profitability. It is often used to estimate how much of the sales can be utilized to make profits. In simple terms, the profit margin represents the portion of total sales that goes into making profits.

3. Competitive strategy

A competitive strategy is a plan that has been put in place by an organization or company to ensure that their product gets an advantage over it's competitors.

4. Support activities

Support activities are all the activities that assist the primary activities in the overall operations of an organization.