| dc.description.abstract | The persistent shortage of medical supplies is experienced regionally, nationally and locally. In Kenya the shortage of Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine that protects children against TB and meningitis vaccines are procured centrally and supplied from the source to the various regions through KEMSA. The performance of the public health sector in Kenya has been a major concern to the Kenyan people and the blame has been shifting to shortage of these drugs in hospitals a mandate of KEMSA. The persistent stock outs of drugs do not meet good supply practices (NTF, 2008) a situation that significantly threatens the services rendered at the Public Health facilities. Coupled with this, KEMSA doesn't inform of the shortages until the point of receipt of drugs at the facilities. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of inventory management practice on the performance of Kenya Medical Supplies Authority. Specific objectives were to determine the influence of information technology for inventory monitoring; inventory supply and demand planning practice on inventory management; staff competency on the performance of KEMSA. The study was guided by the following theories: theory of constraints, lean theory and contingency theory. The variables in the study conceptualized using conceptual framework. The study adopted descriptive case study research design. The study unit of analysis was KEMSA headquarters, Nairobi Kenya. The target population of the study was 118 employees consisting of the directors, managers and supervisors of various cadres at KEM SA, who are in charge of distribution, human resource, and inventory and warehouse departments. The study sample size was 91 respondents. Both primary and secondary data was used. Primary data was collected using a questionnaire while secondary data was collected using document analysis guide. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used in the analysis of data. The findings include: information technology for inventory monitoring influenced inventory management practice to a moderate extent as the respondents rated it at 3.914 weighted magnitude; Inventory supply planning practice was rated to influence performance of KEMSA to a moderate extent at 3.735 mean weight; inventory management staff competency and inventory demand planning practice have more influence on performance of KEMSA as they were rated at 4.409 and 4.416 weighted magnitude respectively. The model with substituted coefficients results in Y = 0.317+ 0.086 X1 +0.289 X2 + 0.064 X3 + 0.315 X4; the output model show that a unit increase in use of information technology for inventory management causes 0.086 unit increase in the performance of KEMSA; for inventory supply planning practice its unit increase in use will cause 0.289 unit change in performance of KEMSA; further a unit increase in use of inventory management staff competency will result in 0.064 unit increase in performance of KEMSA while unit increase in use of inventory demand planning practice results in 0.315 increase in performance of KEMSA. Inventory management predictors have a strong association with Performance of KEMSA (R = 0.916a), further the inventory management predictors can explain up to 83.8% of the variation in Performance of KEMSA as indicated by R Square (R2 = 0.838), the model used in this study can be relied on by its users in KEMSA up to 83.7% (Adjusted R2 = .837) and this result is statistically significant (p =.000<.05). The study concludes that inventory management significantly influences performance of KEMSA. | en_US |