Assignment:
Throughout America there are thousands & thousands of "Ma & PA" manufacturers. Many are among the 15,000 or so members of NAM. These companies make a wide assortment of products from probably every sector of industry like food, electronics, waste management aircraft, clothing, and even marine components. And you will also find thousands of Ma & PA operations in distribution, again covering every industry & market you can think of. NAM members alone employ over 10,000,000 million people. So it is possible that at some time in your life you will work for one of these companies. Who knows, you may own one yourself.
Typically these companies run with a "skinny" management structure - often just a president/owner, a head of manufacturing (or operations) and a head of sales. Below that, education & skills can be quite limited.
Put you into this environment. You are now the head of operations for a regional (you pick the dozen or so states that you like) distributor of pet supplies. Your customers are local pet shops, groomers (fixed & mobile), veterinarians, small retailers like the dollar store, a maybe a regional food chain like Winn Dixie. The big retail giant (Petsmart) is not in your territory. Your sales department uses independent reps ("5% ers" ) to sell roughly 15,000 SKUs to less than 1,000 customers. You do everything out of a single 50,000 sq. ft. warehouse in the center of your territory and ship 98% of your orders using either common carrier or UPS.
Tell me about your inventory control system. How does it work & who manages it? Why did you take that approach?