North West Case

When the trucks arrive a small team unloads and bring product to their designated section of the store. For apparel, the clothing is put on racks and wheeled out. Where a small team folds, locates and displays them according to planograms and sets. The process of unloading, locating, displaying should be concluded before the store opens with no products on the sales floor. This is to keep the store looking clean and providing the customers with a clean, stocked environment. The effectiveness of Targets current distribution is good; however, inventory counts often have a crippling effect on the company. Since target launched their online pickup and ship from store the company has noticed an error in their operations. Their inventory counts did not refresh fast enough, if a guest just bought say a dress, it would not be accounted for, for 3-5 hours later in the system. Thus, issues for customer satisfaction would occur when a guest would either see online that we had it in stock, or order it for in store pick up and us not being able to fulfill their order. By improving their inventory management system, Target could see an increase in sales, customer satisfaction and online and in store customer traffic.

Answer 2- If there should be a single location for all three companies the inventory holding cost will reduce because the product is placing at one location instead of different three locations. Moreover, by doing this the insurance and misplacing of product of cost reduce but in transit of inventory will increase because the shipments are truck load and the distance between customers and distribution centre is far. Furthermore, with this the service level improved which means order fulfilment process improved too. In addition to this, the

L.L. Beans approach to a one shot order increases the risk of lost sales due to insufficient inventory as well as increases the risks of higher costs due to excessive inventory. The case indicates that lead times are significantly long from their suppliers (in the order of 8 to 12 weeks). We are not clear on the size of these orders but assuming these are mostly a one shot batch, it is feasible to estimate that these lead times would be reduced for a smaller quantity per order and more frequent orders. Although this approach would increase the transactional costs with suppliers (because a higher volume of individual orders would be placed at the supplier) it might generate significantly more impactful benefits such as:

High risk of huge inventory returns from the distributors if they are not able to sell in reasonable timeframe. This will increase huge sales return in B&L books in the following year.

Company is facing a challenge of potentially higher inventory costs. Rising prices may further result in changes in customer behavior and preferences.

By taking this approach I believe that not only will the company itself benefit from the changes but the customers and employees as well. From the company side of things, they would see a higher profit margin from customers who would consider placing more orders. They would also see a drop in cost’s as far as employee payroll is concerned and telephone cost’s. Customers benefit by now having less time spent waiting for an item to be located, instead being readily available. When this occurs they are more inclined to come back and make similar purchases instead of going elsewhere because turnaround time is much quicker with less hassle and uncertainty on their part. Employees would be able to focus more on customer’s in their store and less time on phone lines or tracking down product’s. This eliminates customer dissatisfaction in stores and allows sales to grown since more customers would stay and shop as oppose to leaving angry for lack of

A supply chain solution to ordering would be to invest in purchasing software set up on a network for KFF management and store managers to access at anytime. This software would allow all stores to place orders cohesively. Each store manager can see how much product is being sold in each store and compare sales. If there is an overstock in one store, managers can move inventory to another store by looking at the data on the network. Kathy can implement a Just-in-Time (JIT) system. This is the concept behind creating the firm 's product in the least amount of time (Gomez-Mejia & Balkin, 2002). Kathy and the management team will develop a smooth and integrated production process. Possibly in the future KFF can use the same type of JIT inventory systems as Wal-Mart. The inventory reorders are generated as products are scanned at check out. As soon as an items hits a certain number in stock, the information is sent to the supplier for reorder

The advantages of a centralized warehouse is higher service levels and lower inventory holding costs due to aggregating customer demand and pooling risk. That is, if customer demand is high in one region and lower in another, there will be no need to hold excess inventory in a regional warehouse; the variation in demand will balance out and reduce the requirements for excess inventory. Additionally, the fixed costs of maintaining one central warehouse/distribution center will be lower than five regional warehouses.

By modifying the transportation route, the trucks were able to get the product inventory to intended destinations somewhat faster which was another factor in the stores stabilizing product inventory on location.

When offers of reduced pricing are accepted for equipment, meeting delivery expectations becomes an important part of enhancing the customer experience to maintain satisfied loyal customers. An inventory specialist in the current distribution center would be given the additional task of segregating and maintaining inventory levels to meet the needs of the customer loyalty department.

 Good distribution concepts with no one store more than 6 hrs. away from warehouse.

Store operation process is integrated with system providing work structure, production schedule and marketing strategy recommendation.

The manufacturing cost can be lower as the rearrangement of the production line to meet urgent order can be minimize or even eliminated.

While the purchasing department is busy working on the inventory other departments are using the sales projections to work on their staffing needs. They have done time studies to determine how many “pickers, and packers” are needed for their peak season. Their customer service department is also using these same sales projections to determine how many phone calls they will receive along with how many representatives they need. They are also meeting with shipping companies to negotiate cost and packing volumes. The shipments begin coming in June, and brought to their receiving area. Once everything is checked and made sure they have received what they should have received it in put into their warehouse. The warehouse is set up from slower movers to faster movers. The faster movers are set up closer to the conveyer lines to minimize the travel time for the pickers. In August they start staffing of the warehouse. While all departments are filling their staffing needs and beginning their training, the purchasing department is watching what costumes are selling early to see if there is

This report provides the analysis and examples of inventory management system and forecasting methods of Walmart. Methods of analysis and evaluation include Walmart strategic vendor partnerships, fewer links in supply chain, cross docking, and technology. Results of methods mentioned show Walmart accruing a high inventory turnover ratio of 8.1 (Bloomberg). In comparison to other retailer on regional and global scale Walmart hits industry highs with 71.9% in market share