Materials management objectives are categorized into:

1) Primary objective

2) Secondary objectives

Primary Objectives:

“Making available (supply) of materials in specified quantity and quality at economic cost and maintaining the continuity of supply. Minimization of investments in materials and inventory costs, and assuring high inventory turnover.”

Secondary Objectives:

Secondary objectives help to achieve the primary objectives.

The secondary objectives can be stated as:

• Purchasing the items from a reliable source at economic price.
• Reduction of costs by using various cost reduction techniques such as variety reduction, standardization and simplification, value analysis, inventory control, purchase research etc.
• Co-ordination of the functions such as planning, scheduling, storage and maintenance of materials.