  The success of any business depends on how well it is able to satisfy
customer demand, while remaining financially viable. Globalisation and the
growth of e-commerce have resulted in retail businesses having to manage
increasing numbers of products. As the number of products sold increases, so
does the complexity of the corresponding inventory management problem.
High-quality decision making, in this regard, necessitates the utilisation of
computerised decision support systems capable of accommodating the complexity
presented by a large number of products. Existing frameworks for decision
support in inventory management are mainly focused on a single facet of the
inventory management problem - generic, integrated frameworks seem to be absent
from the literature. In this paper, a holistic framework design is proposed
which integrates all of the major components expected to form part of a generic
framework for inventory management. The objective of the framework is to
provide decision support in respect of various inventory management operations,
such as product segmentation, demand forecasting and determining the sizes and
timings of replenishment orders, in pursuit of a desirable balance between the
conflicting objectives in inventory management.
