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August 10, 2017 - Supply Chain Flagship Newsletter
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This Week in SCDigest

bullet Time for a Supply Chain Revolution? bullet SC Digest On-Target e-Magazine
bullet Supply Chain Graphic & by the Numbers for the Week bullet Holste's Blog/Distribution Digest
bullet New Cartoon Caption Contest Begins bullet Trivia      bullet Feedback
bullet Expert Columns bullet On Demand Videocasts
  FEATURED RESEARCH  
 
 

The State of Retail and Vendor 
Supply Chain Relations 2017

SCDigest Launches Second Biannual Benchmark Study

 

Example Chart from 2015 Report

 

 

 

Are We Getting More Integrated and Collaborative - 
Or Heading in the Other Direction? Help Needed from 
Retailers and Vendors/Brand Companies.

 




 
first thought

SUPPLY CHAIN NEWS BITES


Supply Chain Graphic of the Week
Walmart's Many Sustainability Initiatives with Vendors

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States Line Up for New Toyota Factory

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West Coast Longshoremen in Surprising Contract Move
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How Much have US Freight Volumes Grown Since the Bottom of Recession?
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Intel Invests Big in Autonomous Driving Technology
   

NEW CARTOON CAPTION CONTEST BEGINS

August 9, 2017 Contest


See The Full-Sized Cartoon and Send in Your Entry Today!


Holste's Blog: Best-in-Class Shippers Provide Real-Time Order Tracking Status
 
 

NEW RESEARCH
The State of Retail and Vendor Supply Chain Relations 2017

Example Chart from 2015 Report

  

Are We Getting More Integrated and Collaborative - 
Or Heading in the Other Direction? Help Needed from 
Retailers and Vendors/Brand Companies.

 


ONTARGET e-MAGAZINE
Weekly On-Target Newsletter:
August 9, 2017 Edition


New (RFID) Cartoon, Enterprise Pull, Truckload Q2 Results, More Robots and more

EXPERT COLUMN
Great Expectations: End-to-End Visibility

by Nick Boland
Director,
Global Product Marketing
Amber Road

EXPERT COLUMN
The Two Levers of Inventory Optimization

by Henry Canitz
Product Marketing & Business Development Director
Logility

EXPERT COLUMN
WMS Vendors - the Walking Dead

by Mark Fralick
GetUsROI

TRIVIA QUESTION

How many drivers does Walmart have in its private fleet operations?

Answer Found at the
Bottom of the Page


Time for a Supply Chain Revolution?

One of the nice the nice things about my current job is that I can get a review copy of almost any book about supply chain or business that I want, a perk I really need to access even more frequently than I do.

The other side of that coin is that fairly often a new book simply shows up in the SCDigest mailbox, as was the case a couple of months ago when "The Supply Chain Revolution" by Suman Sarkar, a consultant formerly at AT Kearney and now heading his own firm, Three S Consulting.

I have mixed feelings about the book, as I will explain in more detail below, but the central theme is that CEOs by and large simply fail to see the opportunities supply chain brings beyond cost reduction in terms of growth and competitive advantage.

GILMORE SAYS:


"Supply chain segmentation," remains a relatively hot top overall, and Sarkar recommends its adoption in several areas, with customer service management being at the top of that list.


WHAT DO YOU SAY?

Send us your
Feedback here

Early on, Sarkar says that "Most CEOs continue to ignore supply chain management and sourcing. One result, not surprisingly, is that the state of the art in these two fields has not changed much in twenty years."

Are either or both of these statements - that CEOs mostly overlook supply chains, and that the discipline has not advanced much in two decades - really true? If so, that is really something rather shocking here in 2017.

It brings to mind a few anecdotes. When Home Depot supply chain chief Mark Holifield led a supply chain transformation at the retail giant starting in 2007, he acknowledged that senior management had paid relatively little attention to supply chain until then, other than the need to get inventory to stores (at whatever cost), in the face of a mass "land grab" to open stores in desirable locations before Lowes or someone else snatched them up. So, rightly or wrongly, circumstances can turn management away from supply chain.

Second, around the same time Paul Dittmann and the late Tom Mentzer of the University of Tennessee, along with Reuben Slone, now head of Walgreen's supply chain, wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review asking CEOs if they were the weakest link in their company's supply chain.

The article related an anecdote they heard from one company supply chain executive who wasn't really being pushed by his CEO.

Why? The CEO didn't appreciate the business-critical nature of the supply chain operation. This lack of awareness was almost incomprehensible to the executive - yet there it was."

My first two stories are almost a decade old. Just within the past two years, a group of senior supply chain managers at a small group meeting I attended generally agreed that while there was some recognition of the role of supply chain in growth, it was very hard to measure. What is much easier to measure is cost - so that's what drives the metrics and incentives.

With the game-changing dynamics in most business sectors right now, companies must either revolutionize (another word for transform) their supply chains or face losing market share and position or an even worse fate, Sarkar says, arguing that "The contrast could not be more clear between companies that have turned sourcing and supply chain into competitive weapons and those that have not."

The book early on goes through the now oft-told story of how Spanish apparel retailer Zara has indeed used its supply chain as its key competitive edge. What's is most remarkable, however, is that its competitors still can't match what it does with its supply chain many years later.

As Sarkar notes, Zara is somehow able to get new merchandise into its stores from concept to in-stock in an almost unbelievable 10-15 days. He offers as a comparison Gap stores, which Sankar says generally takes 9-12 months to accomplish the same feat.

Zara has bet on speed versus scale - even though it operates some 7000 stores across the globe - but whatever it is losing in per unit costs from the approach it is obviously gaining and more in terms of cash flow (low inventories), net margins (fewer markdowns) and revenue growth (fresher merchandise).

Why can't others replicate the supply chain model? I don't have an answer, just some guesses: entrenched processes that just can't be given up; fear of the risk of changing the paradigm, which has sort of worked until now; and just maybe, CEOs who can't drive the changes in supply chain.

But maybe more retailers need to make the transformation soon. There are a growing number of new apparel sector entrants claiming to have "superfast fashion" operating models, similar to Zara.

"If a company can affordably and profitably produce merchandise that people actually want to buy in two-to-four weeks, we're in big trouble as an industry. It's the mother of all disruptors. But I'm not sure it's actually doable," recently wrote Paula Rosenblum of RSR Research.

But Sarkar would probably say, "What if it is?" The "mother of all disruptors" indeed.

So what are the keys to supply chain revolution? I wish Sankar had spent more time on the big picture. Instead, he almost immediately moves into a series of specific improvement areas, ranging from driving customer satisfaction from service improvements, "debottlenecking" the supply chain and thus reducing risk, sourcing excellence and more.

"Supply chain segmentation," remains a relatively hot top overall, and Sarkar recommends its adoption in several areas, with customer service management being at the top of that list.

"Typically, only a small group of customers requires a high level of service," Sankar writes. "When faced with competition or customer requests, customers tend to increase the service levels for all their customer segment irrespective of their size of profitability."

Sankar offers a simple three-step approach for service segmentation, which is as follows:

1. Classify customers by segment: Often, this involves a two-dimensional matrix, such as the approach one retailer used for its stores, with "branding criticality" (high or low) on one dimension, and "volume and profitability" on the Y-axis. The analysis found some 95% of stores were being over-serviced.

2. Develop a menu of service levels: Basically, this involves identifying several different service metrics that will be offered to market. I will add that the core of supply chain segmentation is managing different metric levels for individual segments, rather than a universal measure/target for all segments.

3. Identify service levels appropriate for different segments: Per my point above, if you do not take this step, you are really not doing segmentation. Sankar also says there needs to be some way for customers to pay for the high service levels - though that of course is easier said than done.

From his AT Kearny background I suspect, Sankar spends a decent amount of time on opportunities in sourcing, where for one he says most companies need to get a lot more from supplier collaboration and alliances in the current environment than they do now. He hopes that the sourcing discipline will move from being simply a cost center focused on purchase price to one viewed as a more integral part of the business. A key to this, Sankar says, is the "triangulation" approach - getting equal views of needs and requirements from customers, the business and suppliers - a method he details near the end of the book.

There is a lot more, but I am out of room. The book is a nice summary of the many opportunities in supply chain, probably not much different in the end from similar works, but simply and understandably laid out, making it especially useful for non-supply chain managers and executives or anyone wanting to grasp the basics of supply chain's potential. There is also an interesting chapter on retail "store investment" that I don't have room for here but is very interesting in these challenging times for brick and mortar.

That said, in addition to having more meat around "big picture" strategies and opportunities - meaning how can the supply chain as an ecosystem become more effective? - I wish there had been more examples of improvement and value creation from less prominent companies, whereas this book features a number of stories from very large and famous companies such as Apple, Boeing, Amazon and others. This is a frequent general complaint of mine across supply chain books.

It's a fast and easy read. Sankar is close to the action, and in the end says most companies have many, many opportunities for supply chain improvement - especially if CEOs get on board.

Are CEOs often the barrier to supply chain improvement? Have we really not made much progress as a discipline in 20 years? What are your thoughts on segmentation? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback button or section below.



View Web/Printable Version of this Column
   

On Demand Videocast:

How DOM and WMS Work Together to Power Omnichannel Supply Chains

Experts from Tompkins International and Softeon Set the Record Straight in Fast Paced, Q&A Format

This discussion will be based on an outstanding new "Executive Brief" on this same topic, developed jointly by Kevin Hume of Tompkins International and Satish Kumar, a vice president at Softeon.


Featuring SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore, Kevin Hume of well-known consulting firm Tompkins International and Satish Kumar, a vice president at Softeon.

Available On Demand

On Demand Videocast:

New Cloud WMS Solution is Game Changer for Warehouse Management Deployment and Flexibility


New Technology and Deployment Approach Offer a Simply Better Way to WMS Implementations - Learn How


In this outstanding Videocast, we will cover the latest in each-picking robotics, co-bots, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, sensors, drones and droids.


Featuring  Dan Gilmore, Editor, along with Mark Hawksley and Bruno Dubreuil of TECSYS, a leading provider of WMS solutions.

Available On Demand

On Demand Videocast:

Innovation in Shipper-3PL Relationships Benchmark Study Results

New Research will be Unveiled from SCDigest and JDA On This Increasingly Important Topic

In this outstanding broadcast, SCDigest and JDA recently completed new research study on innovation in shipper-3PL relationships, with the goal of obtaining the perspectives of both shippers and service providers on this increasingly important topic. All registrants will be sent a copy of the report will all the data shortly after the Videocast.


Featuring SCDigest editor Dan Gilmore and Danny Halim and Lori Harner of JDA.

 

Available On Demand

YOUR FEEDBACK

We received a number of emails on our piece on a consultant saying Walmart has been pressuring carriers not to also haul freight for rival Amazon - after the Wall Street Journal reported Walmart would not let its software vendors use Amazon's popular web services platform for their systems. Walmart strongly denied the news relative to the carrier pressure.

A sampling of Feedback below, some from our partner RetailWire, which carried our article.

Feedback on Walmart on Carriers and Software Vendors not to Use Amazon

comma

Walmart likes to exert influence. This should surprise no one that they would try to use their influence on their transportation providers. It’s a slippery slope and hopefully it truly is a false report or Walmart will ultimately suffer the consequences for this.

On the other hand, with respect to AWS — the real question is, why do ANY retailers support using AWS directly or indirectly through their technology suppliers? Why feed the beast its most profitable business?

Ricardo Belmar
Sr Director, Worldwide Enterprise Product Marketing
InfoVista

comma


comma

Walmart put the trucking issue to bed with a denial and an admission that doing so would be illegal. They would lose badly in attempting such a scheme.

The more interesting issue is AWS. Data sensitivity is a bonafide concern, and Walmart’s move can encourage other retailers to follow suit with their technology vendors.

I hope Microsoft Azure is listening, as they can grab business with value -added solutions for retailers, such as customer history machine learning for better service and recommendations, better kiosk and tablet support for associates, and less time maintaining servers than AWS requires.

Dan Frechtling
SVP Product and Marketing
G2 Web Services


comma


 

comma

Amazon Web Services and the issue of carrier limits when working with Amazon are two completely different issues.

There are many reasons why Walmart and other businesses should be extremely cautious about having their sensitive, competitive data residing on AWS cloud servers.

The business of hauling freight is an independent contractor decision that does not involve sensitive data or security. Walmart has the volume and resources to compete for carrier space. It is the smaller retailer who will be squeezed out during peak holiday seasons.

Chris Petersen
President
Integrated Marketing Solutions

comma

 


SUPPLY CHAIN TRIVIA ANSWER

Q: How many drivers does Walmart have in its private fleet operations?

A: 7,989 on average last year, according to Walmart’s recent Global Responsibility Report for 2017.

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