Supply Chain Strategy Of A Convenience Store Chain

A supply chain is a net work of firms. Thus, each firm in the chain should build its own supply chains to support the competitive priorities of its services or products. Two distinct designs used to competitive advantage are efficient supply chains and responsive supply chains. Efficient supply chains work best in environments where demand is highly predictable. The focus of the supply chain is on efficient flows of services and materials keeping inventories to a minimum. The firm’s competitive priorities are low-cost operations, consistent quality, and on-time delivery. Responsive supply chains designed to react quickly in order to hedge against uncertainties in demand. Work best when firms offer a great variety of services or products and demand predictability is low. Typical competitive priorities are development speed, fast delivery times, customization, variety, volume flexibility, and top quality. Tables below show the environments and design features that best suit each design.

A typical Toys “R” Us store brought together 8-15,000 SKUs (stockkeeping units) of toys and

iii. Processing merchandise while leaving and entering the warehouses was In itself a very inefficient and unfruitful task because of the bad state of inventory management in the warehouse. This contributed to frequent stock outs in the stores because of the lack of proper inventory processing.

* Outbound logistics- During this step Target’s managers should make sure the received products are correct and ready to be stocked on the shelves for the consumers (Riley, 2012).

Richard Bell describes four stages that business strategies use today to grow larger and faster, as well as attracting and keeping customers. List these four stages, and discuss in detail how an International retailer would apply these today?

Four elements must exist to prove there is a valid contract between the chain store and Sam Stevens. These four elements include the agreement, consideration, contractual capacity and legal object. The first element of the agreement would be deemed to exist if one person makes an offer and the other party accepts that offer. In this case, Sam did verbally agreed to send the 1,000 units to the chain store; that element does count toward a contract. The second element of the consideration would be deemed to exist if each party gets something in exchange for their promise under a contract. If Sam and the chain store agreed to what he would get in return for his 1,000 units, this element would be valid. However, this was not mentioned by either side, so the contract would not be valid.

Supply chain is the process of getting a product from point A to point B. With how advanced technology has become, there are more ways than ever to transport the product. The goal of a supply chain managers is to get the product into their hands. The mangers negotiate with the suppliers to purchase the raw materials. Then, they ship those materials as efficiently as possible through trucks, ships, and trains. Then finally, they do everything they can to make the product gets to the store on time so the consumer can enjoy the product. Why is this so important? Well, without it, we as the consumer wouldn’t enjoy that fresh produce that Kroger provide or the convenient drive thru pharmacy. Everything we own is because of a company’s supply chain, and without these supply

Order processing involves the following steps: customer orders item(s), order received by the manufacturer, order processed by the manufacturer, credit verified by the credit department, order packed and loaded on to truck for shipment, order shipped to customer, and finally, order receive by customer and added to inventory (Nobilis, 2011). Having a competitive supply chain is not successful unless Target has the technologies to deliver the good or service to consumers in an efficient, effective manner.

Many people go to convenience stores as they don’t have travel far distances just to buy a few items even if it’s a bit costly so they don’t have to travel far for limited items.

Kroger has done a better job as of resent, but I would go into one of their grocery stores and find what I needed and then go into another one and not be able to find it. The layouts of each one would be different. Each retail chain should have the same layout so it is consistent no matter what store you go into. A c-store is a convenient store, many times you can walk in and it is not merchandised well. Maybe they have so much to put into a small space. “Take a look at what your customers see when they enter your store. Shoppers tend to stay to their right-hand side when they enter a store, and continue walking along the perimeter to do much of their buying” (Chiasson, 2008). It is important to put the sale items at the checkout and the new items to the right of the store.

One of the gaps that Checkers successfully bridges is the space gap that exists between seller and the buyer. This gap is simply the physical distance between the producer and the consumer. Checkers bridges this gap by having large fleets of trucks and trailers at strategically placed distribution centres around the country. As checkers is one of the many brands under Shoprite Holdings Ltd, there are highly coordinated means of transportation from the distribution centres and the retail stores and thus the consumer. According to Shoprite Holdings Ltd on their website; the fleets of trucks operate 24 hours a day and seven days a week, which get the product to the customer quicker. Shoprite states they have a “highly sophisticated transport route planning and scheduling system” which improves store deliveries. This effectively closes the space gap between the checkers and the consumer.

Walmart has a large retail seafood business and it is always a challenge to reduce cost and promote sustainability. With upward trend for the demand of sea-food, depletion of the seafood supply is inevitable unless Walmart have a deep engagement of their supply chain. One strategy that Walmart wants to promote to their suppliers is for all of them to take up the Marine Stewardship Council’s certification program. This process will be time consuming, expensive and complex. The depletion of some fish poses a threat to Walmart and its seafood supply chain.

In an organization, product quality and delivery is largely dependent on the supply chain management which in turn affects the overall profitability. Therefore, supply chain quality control is essential in any organization to ensure a competitive edge in the industry and minimizing the operating costs. Firms are thus competing on the innovation front to stay upfront in meeting customer expectations. One of the industry in which advances in supply chain management have been evolving rapidly is the retail industry. Due to the changing nature of the competitiveness in the retail industry, supply chain managers must come up with expansion plans that align with multiple-channel and geographic growth.

The first two Atlanta based stores were 60,000 square foot facilities that carried approximately 25,000 different Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) maintained in large, open warehouse style isles (The Home Depot, n.d., The Alfano Group, 2015). According to the Home Depots (n.d.) history bio, the volume of products available dwarfed typical hardware store inventory and variety, while empty boxes stacked on shelves above gave the illusion of carrying an even larger volume of product on a daily basis.

4. In a service supply chain, the (explicit) cost of information is higher than in a product