A Spanish clothing retailer, Zara, can bring new products to market in three or four weeks by holding materials in undyed form and regularly feeding information about market demand back to its suppliers. This allows it to react quickly to changing demand patterns. When it figures out which items are Read more…
There are five requirements for any customisation supply chain strategy to succeed: 1. ๐๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ๐จ๐ฆ๐ข๐ฌ๐๐ญ๐ข๐จ๐ง โ the experience must be unique to each customer. 2. ๐ ๐ฅ๐๐ฑ๐ข๐๐ข๐ฅ๐ข๐ญ๐ฒ โ the personalised nature of the experience must adapt to the changing needs of the customer and the environment, including product configuration and flexible delivery Read more…
To compete with reliability, the bullwhip effect must be reduced or eliminated. This means addressing its root causes: – seasonal peaks, – promotions, – cyclical peaks and – order batching Influencing seasonal peaks or promotions, as in retail promotions, involves close inter department collaboration with marketing and sales.Predicting the timing of or mitigating the Read more…
Most popular case study for Rationalisation is from Gillette in its 2004 supply chain turnaround. Aimed at reversing a major inability to fulfil orders reliably, it embarked on four improvement initiatives: minimising complexity, improving demand-supply planning processes, improving supply planning processes and establishing optimal support systems. SKU rationalisation was central Read more…
For a certain period of planned time, it makes sense to choose a strategy and orient resources to it rather than trying to be excellent at everything.Companies can become stuck on a particular stage of lifecycle and prevent themselves from getting the low hanging (but exponentially greater) fruits of the Read more…
A low-cost strategy implies a supply chain strategy that cuts costs, and indeed, companies that follow this strategy typically favour rationalisation and synchronisation strategies over innovation and customisation. A focus strategy implies a supply chain strategy that helps to make the product or service more special in the eyes of Read more…
Today, well-intended supply chain professionals are structurally encased in vertically focused functional silos. In the design of the IT initiatives, many companies don’t spend enough time on metrics and reward systems. Continually they should ask themselves, โIf we are successful, what does work look like? How do we reward the right Read more…
From the customerโs point of view, benefits result from increased efficiency, reliability, flexibility and innovation, and these are the underlying principles of SCM. These benefits manifest as the 4 main supply chain strategies for companies: 1. Rationalisation is excellence in managing the operating costs through SCM to achieve cost leadership Read more…
Transportation used to be about minimising the cost of routing and scheduling; Logistics used to be about finding the least-cost network design; Purchasing used to be about minimising purchased costs; Manufacturing used to be about scheduling production to achieve the greatest fill rates at the least cost; and Customer service used to be about Read more…
There are 2 ways to answer the above question: Option #1 1. The growing length of supply chains and the increased number of parties in the transaction creates the perfect recipe for a bullwhip effect: the amplification of changes in order volume as one progresses from the origin of the Read more…