The maximum number of safety stock days that an item will get. This setting ensures that no item will receive excessive safety stock, even if their risks are very high.

When using these parameters, it is important to determine whether the business has a bias towards over or under forecasting, suppliers being late or early, and whether accumulating excess stock or stocking out will be more detrimental.

Pro tip: The default value for Maximum safety stock is 999 days. It is very important to consider adjusting this value depending on business needs.

Safety stock is used to protect us against stocking out. Too little safety stock means we run a risk of stocking out should we have unpredictable disruptions to our supply or demand. This will negatively impact our fill rate.

However, too much safety stock means we are tying up unnecessary capital into stock which is not great for our stockholding position.

Setting these parameters ensures limits are put in place regarding how much or how little safety stock can be calculated by the app.

Question: I set my Maximum safety stock parameter to be 50 days. I create a policy override for a group of items to set their safety stock to 60 days. What is their safety stock value now?

Answer: 60 days. The policy override will replace any global constraints except the “No safety stock for items with less than” constraint. Refer to the article Why is the safety stock policy override not applying? for a detailed explanation.