With Recent Declines In Transportation And Shipping Costs,

However, forecast errors will also lead to unhappy customers, lost sales, and excessive inventory. To minimize errors, retailers should find the right demand forecast. Retailers do not want to have a lot of inventory sitting in the back room and too little inventory that will cause out of stock. Holding huge inventory will cause a retailer to have more expenses and decrease their profit if item is not sold especially if the product is innovative type like electronics. The challenge is to balance the inventory with demand. Communication and contribution from people in functional area is also important to create better information and improve overall accuracy. At this time, customer satisfaction will start to decrease. For example, MPRNews says one of Target loyal customer, Ann Hendricks, she is disappointed with target store in St.Paul. “Too many times, she says that store is out of the milk, coffee, bread, pasta and other staples she wants. At Target, sometimes the whole section of cheeses is blank. There's nothing in there” (Moylan). A loyal customer like Ann Hendricks goes to the Lunds & Byerlys store in downtown St. Paul to buy her grocery

If the operation have not reordered all the goods they need, this can lead to irritated customers and lower revenue for the operation.

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.

Retail super-giant Wal-Mart has fought its way to becoming the world's largest company. Wal-Mart’s legendary supply chain technology has allowed them to break the three-day barrier that some economists in the eighties felt that it was unbreakable. In other words, Wal-Mart is often able to replenish items on the Wal-Mart shelf in less than three days – not from the central warehouse to the shelf, but from the manufacturer to the shelf. With quick and reliable 2-day turn around, Wal-Mart is able to maintain lower levels of inventory and still meet customer demand. These lower inventory levels result in either a reduced floor plan with lower carrying costs and lower interest expense – or a greater diversity of products on the store shelves.

Some of the disadvantages are: limiting the vendors may limit the variety of products, relinquishing inventory control over to vendors and distributors may negatively impact their customer satisfaction, and the customers may decide to deal with supplier directly which could put Best Buy at risk of loosing their business.

The customers, wholesalers and retailers may order in large quantities with the expectation that they will receive a greater allocation of products that are in short supply. The impact on the supply chain is significant as the forecasted demand is greatly, and unrealistically, increased with these inflated orders. Eventually orders disappear and cancellations pour in, making it impossible for the manufacturer to determine the real demand for its products

Office Depot uses multiple inventory strategies to order products. 90% to 95% of goods are ordered through automatic replenishment, manual replenishment, pull replenishment, and global sourcing are also used depending on channel, volume, velocity and cost. (Office Depot, 2015). The accuracy of the inventory from both a DC and store perspective is critical to the organizations success. Heizer and Render (2014) state that record accuracy is a prerequisite to inventory management, production scheduling, and sales. Accuracy is maintained by either periodic or perpetual systems (p.479). In Office Depot, the stores are required to cycle-count technology items such as laptops, desktops computers, and tablets five days a week. Discrepancies are entered in the system and bounced off the local DC’s on-hand inventory discrepancies. Office Depot is a “blind receive” organization meaning the stores receive pallets of products and simply unwrap and put them away. The only way a store knows if a product is missing is through the cycle-count program. This system was put into place to speed up the receiving process and eliminate unnecessary steps once the product was received at the store level. Office Depot conducts a full physical inventory once a year through a third party and trues up the inventory shrink at this time.

Inventory Management- The entire supermarket must be working closely on inventory management so the perfect amount of inventory is always on hand. As I mentioned before, too little of a product results in loss of sales and unhappy customers, but too much is a waste of resources.

This set of data belongs to the online retailer industry. The most significant categories that helped with our decision was the low inventory for a retail business and the relatively high inventory turnover. The reasoning behind the high inventory turnover was because the goods were allowed to sit in storage until sold because of the online aspect of the business. We were also able

Effective retailing technology allows companies to manage inventory by efficiently storing, shipping, and stocking items that its customers want. Inventory management is the key to a company’s success or failure, and Kmart seems to be the poster child of poor supply chain management. Since as far back as Joseph Antonini’s leadership, Kmart has had logistics issues (Young, 2002). Another recent CEO, Chuck Conaway, went so far as to admit that supply chain management was “the Achilles Heel” of Kmart (Carr & Cone, 2001). This paper will examine how investing in redundancy, having an increase velocity in sensing and responding, and by building an adaptive supply chain community could have reduced the risk that is damaging to a supply chain.

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.

The Spanish retail chain Zara has unique supply chain management practices that enable it to gain a competitive advantage over other fashion retailers in the industry. Zara’s rapid response time enables the firm to quickly respond to changing fashions while deliberately under producing products. This strategy, which is supported by competencies in logistic management, design and information systems, allows the company to maintain less inventory and higher profit margins and is a key factor to Zara’s success. The firm should continue to add value by seeking new opportunities to expand in the retail market and maintain their sustainable growth.

The largest companies within this industry have chains of stores around the country. They usually operate their clothing distribution channels through distribution centers usually located centrally. These distribution centers receive the merchandise and then send it out to stores across the country that orders them. Unlike typical warehouses, these distribution centers don’t store merchandise for a long time because of the dynamic nature of the industry. Fashion trends keep changing and products are taken off the shelves when they do not move fast.

if supplier doesn’t supply on time may incur the company the loses of the clothes out of date fashion . Huge number of tons will be consumed faster than before because of this fast fashion. This was the possible disadvantage of the fast fashion distribution system. There are a lot of advantages that offset the disadvantages of the fast fashion distribution system. We may say here fast fashion requires innovation and brainstorming to get new designs overtime to be

For partners of ASOS, they generally go through the same production process as ASOS own-branded dress. However, they receive the order from ASOS and its merchandisers instead of consumers. It is an important process for ASOS as understanding the product lifecycle and stock level, they can plan the introduction and withdrawal of product. Also price can be adjusted accordingly with which sales are introduced during the decline period (The Times 100, NA). However, this supply chain requires a high collaboration of functions across supply chain (Fernie, 2009). The reason why ASOS can eliminate the traditional functions of a retail store is due to its well-managed supply chain, effective stock keeping system and fast-going logistic system (Meadows, 2007).