Barilla Case Study

The retailers had to estimate their customers’ demands well in advance of the selling season and place bulk orders for each season’s inventory. This involved high risk for the retailers as over-estimation would lead to unsold stock; whereas under-estimation led to stock outs and loss of potential sales.

Changes within the supply chain can disrupt the normal flow of goods and services because each change hasn’t been fully scrutinized. A firm can plan and speculate that a change with have a certain effect on the supply chain, but until those processes have been measured it is impossible to know the true cause and effect of any disruption.

distributors would have to submit their Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) so that Barilla can control it.

Barilla, the leading pasta manufacturer in Italy, faces increasing problems related to demand fluctuation. Their distributors also suffer from high inventory holding costs and low service levels on the other hand. This report explains, why the company and their distributors are troubled with this situation and how Barilla intends to solve it. The problem Barilla experiences is called the “Bullwhip Effect”, i.e. that demand variability increases when moving up the supply chain. Several factors enforce this Bullwhip Effect, e.g. high lead times, poor demand forecasting, and batch ordering. In this report we will point out, that exactly those aspects can be identified as the underlying reasons for Barilla’s problems. In a

During the game, I realized that wide gaps in orders of every role in the supply chain such as factory, distributor and retailer create inventory management challenges. For example, distributor records 0units between week1-week 4 compared to retailer within the same period. The retailer records 3units, 5units, 2units and 2units between weeks 1- week 4. The same applies to factory with 0units from weeks 2-4. Addressing inventory management problems requires developing an average unit level to avoid disappointing customers when demand

Trader Joe 's sells gourmet foods to its customers with a low cost business model, which may seem very difficult to maintain, due to the rising costs in the international markets and the United States. However, with Trader Joe 's long term experience in operations and limited variety of products, this enables the company to reduce costs and transfer those savings to their customers. Furthermore, Trader Joe’s has a very efficient management process that allows keeping the product costs down to keep their customers satisfied. The management process is very significant for Trader Joe 's in which they have planned marvelously to carry certain products which is obtained at a discounted price from their suppliers. Additionally, Trader Joe’s keep costs down to a minimum by choosing non-prime store locations. For

The core problem facing Barilla is the high degree of demand variance that it experiences by product and throughout the year. The main causes of the demand variance are limited visibility downstream, and reliance on promotions to push product downstream.

The single supplier for GameStop was replaced by the numerous different suppliers of Babbages. Every item of inventory needed to be checked to make sure they reflected a price that was going to produce profit for the merged FuncoLand and Babbages stores. Inventory charts were created and every store of both needed to inventory all items listed so that they could be compared with the new companies overall stock as well as profit ratios.

The BARILLA case is an illustrative example where we can understand the effects of a phenomenon which is very common among industries that is called the Bullwhip effect. As an immediate outcome this phenomenon creates large swings in demand on the supply chain resulting from relatively small, but unplanned, variations in consumer demand

The purpose of trade sales promotions are to increase industry visibility and to provide discounts and deals (Marshall, Solomon, & Stuart, 2012). Frito-Lay should use co-op advertising, promotional products, and point-of-purchase displays to increase their sales.

Manufacturing support performance cycles serve as the logistics of production. These functions maintain orderly and economic flow of materials and work-in-process inventory to support production schedules. The goal is to support manufacturing requirements in the most efficient manner. These are internal cycles to the firm, thus they are rarely affected by behavioral uncertainty. Customer accommodation performance cycles are those associated with processing & delivering customer orders. They link customers through timely & economical product availability. Physical distribution integrates marketing and manufacturing efforts. To improve the effectiveness forecast accuracy must improve to reduce uncertainty.

Starbucks is really well known and also believed to be the leading coffee company in the universe. Starbucks is the one of the successful examples to build a good reputation through social media. Starbucks heavily promotes ethical practices throughout the media to create a halo effect. So, Starbucks gains customer’s trust. Starbucks has put different types of Sales Promotion across the country and other nations with hopes of motivating more customer to purchase, especially in times of economic hardships where people are less likely to buy. The coffee company uses all forms of different sales promotion. For instance, Starbucks offered 50% off Frappuccino from 3pm until 5pm on 6 May 2015 in Malaysia. This promotion is

As a well-established coffee retailer and over 35 years of success, Starbucks is at the maturity stage in the product life cycle. It is in this stage that Starbucks needs to shift gears and focus on marketing program modifications by increasing the number of customers and customer visits (Kotler, 2009, pg. 185). While improving service will attract first-time customers and retain current ones, further marketing modifications will need to be made if it wants to continue to grow. More advertising, distribution, sales promotions, and personal selling are a few of the ways to modify the marketing program.

The overarching problem is distributors base their actions off of retail demand on the one side and Barilla sales incentives on the other with no means to reconcile the two. GD’s and DO’s use a variety of inventory systems, but for the most part these systems are based on a simple periodic review. They take a weekly inventory of their stock and place orders accordingly. There are no forecasting systems in place to determine future retail demand on which to base orders. With a lead time of 10-14 days between order placement and delivery and a reactionary ordering system, high costs due to cycles of stockouts and bullwhip effects will continue.

Additionally, promotion can be considered as a marketing strategy which helps the increase in sales (Shimp 1997:42). Starbucks attempted to establish a national monopoly without having to use advertising. They relied on organizing events and promoting their brand – by using mugs and T-shirts on which they printed artworks that were a reflection of a city’s personality.