Steve Lovejoy, senior vice president for the Starbucks global supply chain, discusses initiatives that the company has under way to meet the "whenever, wherever" demands of today's consumers as well as projects aimed at understanding the consumer of tomorrow.
Redbox has an unusual supply chain, with 10 new product introductions a week and no replenishments. An algorithm effectively allocates new DVD's among 43,000 kiosks, but this allocation is quickly skewed when customers use different kiosks to rent and return. Matt James, vice president, explains how the company solves this problem.
Stage Stores operates 850 small-footprint department stores across the country, including the Peebles, Bealls and Goodys chains. Gough Grubbs, senior vice president for distribution and logistics, explains why the company adopted a centralized distribution strategy and how that strategy is supporting corporate growth.
Same-day and next-day delivery are not services normally associated with furniture stores, but City Furniture is changing that in South Florida. City's fast delivery program, which began 12 years ago, has become a key competitive advantage and is changing customer expectations for the industry.
DIRECTV’s service depends on equipment imported from Asia and forward-positioned in 250 locations to support home installations. Having long used Microsoft Excel to forecast demand, the company had a rocky journey to an automated forecasting system from SAP. Randy Sullivan discusses lessons learned and ultimate benefits.
Grupo Herdez is one of Mexico's leading manufacturers and distributors of grocery products and is a pioneer there in Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment. Eduardo Cantu explains some of the challenges to CPFR implementation in Latin America.
The technology surrounding point-of-sale data has improved tremendously in recent years and companies are making much better use of this information, says Tina Lalor, senior business consultant with John Galt Solutions.
The overall shortage of supply chain talent is particularly critical in demand management, says Jason Breault of LifeWork Search. He explains reasons and remedies.
In a multi-year, multi-phase project covering people, processes and technology, Red Wing Shoes streamlined and improved its S&OP process, cutting planning time from six weeks to three and reducing inventory by 27 percent.
Segmenting customers and products to lower costs and improve profit margins also results in higher customer satisfaction, says Wade McDaniel, vice president of solutions development at Avnet Velocity.