Barilla Case Study

The Cincinnati Seasonings Supply Chain is a mockup of a supply chain to support a company that designs and markets food seasonings and sells its products in stores throughout the United States. The purpose of the case study was to familiarize students with setting up a supply chain and simulate its operations. The thought process was to define the product and set up the facilities, vehicles, and routes to have an effective and efficient supply chain. The challenge for the entire exercise was to get the Supply Chain to run continuously for thirty days or more, without interruption or running out of product. Cincinnati Seasonings is a family owned and operated business; the founder was born and raised in Ohio. Cincinnati is

The Supply Chain Management System used at Lowe’s is a collaboration process. According to LeRoy Allen, Senior Vice President of Logistics for Lowe's Companies, as cited by Real Results Magazine (2012), Lowe’s has more than 3,000 suppliers and having effective communication with all of them is difficult. Providing them with key information helps them, not only run their own business but assists Lowe’s in running theirs. This model was designed to efficiently run the supply chain together (para. 2).

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

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.

Looking at the fluctuation in Exhibit 12, one could expect that poor coordination in the supply chain would increase costs. Provide a discussion for the cost of poor coordination in Barilla’s supply chain. Items to consider here include production changeovers or setups, inventory levels, facility utilization, transportation costs, quantity discounts and promotions, canvas periods etc.

The inventory of Kudler’s distribution plan will be entered into manufacturing requirements for estimating input flows and production schedules. As a retailer, Kudler will also link producers to other distributors, buyers, or wholesalers; creating great business relations. These relationships are all crucial with the flow of how their consumers will

While the JITD program has many beneficial it also has its drawbacks. One of them is the perception that the power will be transferred to Barilla, as one of the distributors was quoted “we would be giving Barilla the power to push product into our warehouses just so Barilla can reduce its costs.” Another drawback is that some of the distributors are not comfortable or willing to share their warehouse data, which is a vital piece in order for JITD program to work. Furthermore, it might be hard for some retailers to report daily sales simply because they might not have the point-of-sale technology at their stores.

Order processing involves the following steps: customer orders item(s), order received by the manufacturer, order processed by the manufacturer, credit verified by the credit department, order packed and loaded on to truck for shipment, order shipped to customer, and finally, order receive by customer and added to inventory (Nobilis, 2011). Having a competitive supply chain is not successful unless Target has the technologies to deliver the good or service to consumers in an efficient, effective manner.

Barilla’s products are divided into Fresh products and Dry products. The demand for these two distinct kinds of products is quite different, and the order, shipment and delivery methods for them are also various.

Even though direct competition has decreased, the tendency of retailers to get their products directly from manufacturers puts the company in a position of relooking its competitive edge as a distributor. The marketplace is shifting from an individuality to supply chain performance – the ability to meet end-customers needs through product availability and responsive and on-time delivery. Supply chain performance crosses both functional lines and company boundaries. Brunswick must change their way to fill customer orders faster and more efficiently than the competition.

The other side of the problem is caused by Barilla’s sales and marketing practices, which are based on achieving sales goals without regard to efficient operations. Barilla promotional “canvass” periods are the most problematic of these discounts because they make it in a distributors best interest to invest in months’ worth of stock of a discounted product.  This bulk purchase is unrelated to the near term retail demand and muddles the picture for a Barilla operations manager trying to tailor operations to demand. The volume discounts less problematic because they are incremental, and lead to small changes in orders to achieve a truck-load quantity. This saves on Barilla distribution costs and is unlikely to induce large swings in demand for a given product as trade promotions do.

It is assumed that the logistics strategies outlined in this report would apply to any divisions in Tsingtao Brewery. As such, it is also assumed that other divisions run very similar supply chain management systems to that of South China Sales Company. The final assumption is that investment by the Tsingtao Group in the supply chain is a very manageable investment for them.

The objective of a firm confident with the strength and durability of its competitive advantage and internal resources is to export its business in markets where the potentiality of the benefits arising from the business strategy are not exploited fully or at all. A logical path of growth for a firm follows the Entrepreneurial, Organizational, Corporate, and International phase (Giarratana, 2016). Barilla definitely developed to the latter stage around the 1970’s, when Grace saw the opportunity of exploiting this potential final growth of the Italian group. The failure by the American management and ownership did not mean that the concepts were wrong. Actually, Pietro foresaw the opportunity of taking back Barilla and

Starbucks then reorganized their supply chain – developing new cost-effective models, relooking into suppliers and reconsidering expenditures by ingredient instead of purchase price (Cooke, 2010). The supply chain was streamlined into 4 categories: Plan, Source, Make and Deliver, adopting a simplified system where coffee beans were manufactured in the same region where they are sold (Starbucks, 2012b, November 30). This was modeled by existing