It was 2009, and I was struggling ..
I was head of Merchandise planning and replenishment for a 500+ store chain. My target was to get 99% availability with less than 2% stock which was more than 6 months old in my stores.
I tried many forecasting techniques to ensure higher availability. Some forecasting techniques used to give me a 2%-5% temporary improvement and then it was back to normal. In some cases, the performance even deteriorated!
I was stuck.
I first blamed the algorithms.
Was my Safety stock correct? Min – Max levels? EOQ levels ?
Over the years, I formed an opinion for my inability to reach my target.
I felt that my vendors low OTIF deliveries were the reason for my inability to further improve.
If we had to improve, our vendors had to improve their performance. And changing our vendors’ performance was turning out to be much tougher than we thought.
That’s when a friend recommended Dr. Eli’s book, ‘The Goal’ to me. It was mandatory read at my B School (Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta) but I had not read it then. That book sparked a love for finding the simplicity in complexity. By the end of the year, I had read 8 books by Dr. Goldratt.
I started trying what I had learned from the books at my company.
Finally I got the breakthrough improvement that I had been praying for years!
I understood how my earlier assumptions were holding me back.
It was humbling to know that there was so much we could do to increase availability and freshness in our stores. All this, without the need to change the habits of our vendors!
I met Dr. Goldratt in 2010 and joined Goldratt consulting in 2011.
The journey of finding specific nuances for each industry is a topic for another post!