Heatmap for Visualize Relationships With Inventory Carrying Costs

Use Heatmap to visualize inventory carrying cost by multiple categorical variables.

This example applies to the Supply Chain Module. For more information, go to www.minitab.com/supply-chain-module.

Example

Inventory carrying cost is all the expenses related to the storage of unsold goods. You can record inventory carrying costs as a dollar amount or as a percentage of total inventory over a time period.

In this worksheet, Carrying Costs is the graph variable. Type and Zone are the row variables. Quarterly Forecast and Auto Purchase Order are the column variables.

C1	C2-T	C3-T	C4-T	C5-T
`Carrying Costs`	`Type`	`Zone`	`Quarterly Forecast`	`Auto Purchase Order`
28	Cordless	Central	No	No
22	Cable	Priority	Yes	Yes
36	Cable	Secondary	No	No
35	Cordless	Secondary	Yes	No

How-to

Choose Solutions Modules > Functions > Supply Chain KPIs, then select Launch.
Under Costs, select Inventory carrying cost.
Select Visualize relationships with inventory carrying costs, then click OK.
Select Heatmap, then click OK.
From Display, select Function of a variable.
In Graph variables enter the column that contains the inventory carrying cost data.
From Function, select the function of inventory carrying cost. For example, if you select Mean, the color gradient of the rectangles in the heatmap uses the mean value of inventory carrying cost in each rectangle.
In Row variables enter up to five columns that define the rows.
In Column variables enter up to five columns that define the columns.
Click OK.

Tip

For more information about this analysis, click Help in the main dialog box.