preview

Walton Seed Company

Best Essays

Introduction

Walton Seed Company is a high quality seed company whom is selling grass, flower, and vegetable seeds. The demand for the seeds is increasing. In order to fulfill orders for different customer need, Walton nowadays must provide various services to satisfy customers. Walton should achieve the 7Rs in logistics concept, right product of right quality and right quantity delivered to the right customer in right time and right place with the right cost.

The seed business is such that sales are traditionally very heavy in the spring and early summer and drop off dramatically for the rest of the year. During this period, Walton faces shortage problem with certain types of seeds. It is because the wholesalers and retailers buy …show more content…

The first of these is market power. In order to have seeds on demand, they must have significant power over their suppliers. For example, in the auto industry companies such as Toyota source parts from different smaller companies. Due to Toyota has massive market capitalization and market dominance, it is able to demand the quantity, quality and precise timing for all the parts ordered in its cars. While smaller companies operating a JIT system depends almost solely on the large corporations for their business.

JIT relies on extremely accurate forecasting of sales figures so that the exact quantities of what will be consumed can be ordered and delivered to the right place at the right time. Under the JIT philosophy the requirement is for small shipments to be made more frequently and to meet the precise time requirement of customer. The challenge to logistics management is to find ways in which these changed requirements can be achieved without an uneconomic escalation of costs. There may have to be trade-offs but the goal must be to improve total supply chain cost-effectiveness. (Christopher M, 1998: 188)

An outgrowth of the JIT philosophy has emerged in recent years under the banner of ‘quick response logistics’. The basic idea behind quick response (QR) is that in order to reap the advantages of time-based competition it is necessary to develop

Get Access