Knowledge Logistics IT It’s still good to talk
Martin Elliott, business development director at Savoye, the warehouse automation specialist, believes robust supply chains are all about people and technology working together.
Tesco boss Philip Clarke announced in April a £1bn investment in
his UK operation to revive the retailer’s fl agging fortunes. In his interview on BBC Radio 4 he used the phrase ‘retail is detail’, saying how he and his team had ‘walked the fl oors’ to scrutinise the business to get closer to customers.
If retail is all about detail, then the supply chain is all about visibility. Granted, my ability to coin a catchy phrase isn’t as good as Mr Clarke’s, but bear with me. If the sharp end of retailing is really about truly understanding customer needs, and instinctively giving them
still reveals the odd chink every now and then. Take the recent example where M&S was wrong-footed in the fi rst quarter of the year, failing to move quickly enough to pull in stocks of women’s sweaters when demand unexpectedly rocketed. Apparently buyers were surprised by the cold weather we experienced in February and March, having fi lled the stores with light spring collections. As a result of this planning error, demand for warmer knitwear outstripped supply by a ratio of 3:1. While M&S sold £100,000 worth of knitwear in the fi rst quarter of the year, reports suggest it could have trebled this.
“Open dialogue and sharing of information between departments is still the only way to deliver a seamless service”
what they want (right down to the colour of the deli counter and how often they’re asked if they need help packing their bags), then the business of getting the right products to store at the right time is even more complex.
RARE ERROR
While most retailers have got it sussed when it comes to supply chain performance – ensuring the latest fl avour of yoghurt or perishable hot-cross bun is consistently available on the shelves – the corporate armour
54 June 2012 Storage Handling Distribution
“While global sourcing of products has no doubt hampered M&S’s ability to react more quickly to unpredicted demand patterns, I suspect good old fashioned human error played some part in what retail analysts may look back on as the ‘great knitwear famine of 2012’.
Joking aside, the serious point here is that slick and robust supply chain planning is not just about warehouse management systems, automation and complex route planning. While the technology is increasingly
www.shdlogistics.com
a necessary foundation of any sophisticated supply chain operation, we must never forget that open dialogue and sharing of information between departments is still the only way to deliver a seamless service. While there are still many retailers struggling to make sense of inappropriate, outmoded or downright poorly designed legacy warehouse and supply chain systems, when implemented properly this technology provides a hugely effi cient platform on which the logistics function sits. While I am only too aware of the importance of fi t-for-purpose warehouse automation systems, these rarely work effectively without the human side of the equation working too. In reality, this ideally sees teams of marketing people, designers, ops managers, buyers and logisticians working together to create a complete view of what products are needed when and where.
In supply chain jargon,
it’s often called sales and operational planning – S&OP. However you want to present the solution, it’s about ‘empire builders’ climbing down from their towers to talk to the people in the next silo. As BT once said many years ago, it’s good to talk. ■
www.savoye.com
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