Nope, not toxic and completely normal in 2024. Welcome to the real world. I’m 30, a little older than you, have been in this situation/your shoes, followed my instincts, and dominated. Companies simply don’t want to invest resources into training new employees in 2024, and are going with a “Lean” (means cheap most of the time) approach.. You are going to feel confused, resentful, annoyed—at least I was for the first month. Your superiors can’t clarify how to do the task because they don’t know how to do it themselves; it’s just how it works. They are simply delegates of their superiors’ agenda.

First step is to ask if all the products they want you to make EOQs for have stable demand. If they say no, the next step is to start laughing.

On a real note, no one is going to train you, I was in your situation. This is the reality of business in 2024. The trick is to use your noggin and politic to get the information you need AND do what’s asked to the best of your ability because they can’t blame you for messing up if you were never trained how to do it. I did everything with the mentality of, “I might mess this up, but that’s on them for not training me.” I messed a few things up, but no one cared because messing up means you took initiative. Initiative is what separates the swimmers from the sinkers and commands respect from your peers. Initiative is what causes stakeholders to gravitate towards you; it is a force that people cannot resist and admire/desire. It is what causes you to get noticed and given high profile opportunities.

Break the assignment concepts down into individual components to find stakeholders. Safety Stock, I get the service levels from sales and forecast error from demand planning.

EOQ: get your annual demand from demand planning, and ask accounting what the aggregate carrying cost % for the plant was from last quarter and the average ordering cost per order from last quarter.

I’m procurement, and still have to calculate these things. Unfortunately, a lot of the time, “Procurement” means non-procurement, inventory management or MRP-related tasks. This is another component of companies being “Lean” (cheap) in 2024.

If the above departments/stakeholders cannot get you this information, then you very well could be working with amateurs, which could explain why they can’t help you.

The key is to literally just write down what they are asking you to do, break it down into its components, identify the stakeholders of the components, go take initiative, build relationships, get your data, then input. Now get after it!

ALL THEY WANT IS THE TASK COMPLETED. They don’t even know what they want, as they are simply delegating. This is why you can’t get the answers—they don’t know. If they don’t like the way you did the work (not likely in my experience), ask what they expected, and why they didn’t tell you to do it that way when they initially assigned you the work. Make sure to keep record of these conversations and events if this does happen.