In the retail supply chain today...

...stores guess what consumers will buy and place orders or transfer requests.
...retailer DCs guess what the stores will need and place orders.
...suppliers guess what their customers will order and schedule production.

It's like setting up 100 dominoes and putting each of 100 people in charge of kicking over one domino at precisely the right time.

But if you set up the dominoes correctly, only a single push is required and the chain reaction takes care of the rest - no matter which design you choose.

In the retail supply chain, the replenishment needs of the stores, DCs and manufacturing plants only exist by way of a chain reaction of the demand started by the consumer.

Why not model and plan the supply chain the way it actually operates?

Posted by Jeff Harrop at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We read an excellent article about a concept called "Shelf Centered Collaboration" that Booz Allen outlined in their excellent magazine, "Strategy & Business". From the opening of "Partners at the Point of Sale":

With “shelf-centered collaboration,” manufacturers and retailers can finally turn customer information into profitable insight. Working with carefully selected value chain partners and using new kinds of analytics, they can shift focus from the “mean” to the “meaningful”: from aggregated sales figures to a granular understanding of consumer demand by item, by store, and by day.

The network would also operate “shelf-back,” responding immediately to information about consumer purchase patterns and demand with real-time changes in shelf-stocking decisions, displays, supply chain execution, and even product design. Although this general concept may sound familiar to those in the industry — for example, as “demand-driven supply networks” (DDSN) — current practices are often limited to the rapid replenishment of standard merchandise, without tailoring of the product mix or timing to consumer demand patterns. Nor do current practices incorporate the kind of robust analytics that can predict changes in consumer demand. SCC would help manufacturers, along with store and category managers, make far better use of POS data and analytics.

What's cool is that the "shelf back" concept that they are proposing is really Flowcasting. Is it us, or are a number of people starting to talk more about Flowcasting?

To read the entire article click here.

Posted by Mike Doherty at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Robert Bruce - friend, colleague and former VP of Supply Chain Strategies for Wal-Mart - is scheduled to speak at the Vendor Compliance Federation's November conference in California.

Robert's talk - Making Flowcasting Part of Your CRM Process - will be from 11:15-12:00 on Monday, November 5th. If you're scheduled to be at the conference on that day, be sure to check it out!

To see the complete conference agenda, click here.

For more information on the conference, including location and registration info, click here.

Posted by Jeff Harrop at 03:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)