Supply Chain Management in Developing Countries, New Trends in Global SCM - Case Study Example

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT Supply Chain Management March 12, 2007 Table of Contents Supply Chain Management 1 March 12, 2007 1 Introduction 2 Part I – SCM Overview 3 Part 2: Case Studies of SCM Implementation 14 Conclusion 24 References 25 Introduction Supply Chain Management (SCM) has become one of the essential business processes of modern organisations. SCM increases the efficiency of complex business organisations to access resources and markets spread over wide geographies. This paper analyses various factors of SCM and provides an understanding of how organisations have implemented SCM. Cox (Cox et all, 1995) defined SCM as “the processes from the initial raw materials to the ultimate consumption of the finished product linking across supplier user companies and the functions within and outside a company that enable the value chain to make products and provide services to the customer”. Part I – SCM Overview This section provides a brief history of SCM, explains the important features and phases and also gives an insight into the latest trends in SCM implementation. History of SCM Lummus (Lummus, 1999) has suggested that the history of the supply chain management can be traced to 1980 in the textile industry with the quick response program and later to efficient consumer response in the grocery industry. There was intense pressure to control costs in the textile and apparel industry so the leaders in the US apparel industry formed the ‘Crafted With Pride in the USA Council’ in 1984. In 1985, Kurt Salmon Associates were commissioned to conduct a supply chain analysis of the supply chain. The results of the study showed the delivery time for the apparel supply chain, from raw material to consumer, was 66 weeks long, 40 weeks of which were spent in warehouses or in transit. The long supply chain resulted in major losses to the industry due to financing the inventory and lack of the right product in the right place at the right time. The result of this study was the development of the quick response (QR) strategy. QR is a partnership where retailers and suppliers work together to respond more quickly to consumer needs by sharing information. Significant change as a result of the study was the industry adoption of the UPC code used by the grocery industry and a set of standards for electronic data interchange (EDI) between companies. Retailers began installing point of sale (POS) scanning systems to transfer sales information rapidly to distributors and manufacturers. The study indicated that little change in technology was required to improve performance, other than further development of EDI and POS systems. A set of best practices was suggested that would substantially improve overall performance by expediting quick and accurate flow of information up the supply chain. ECR enabled distributors and suppliers to anticipate future demand far more accurately than the existing system. Through implementation of best practices the projected overall reduction in supply chain inventory was 37 percent, and overall cost reductions in the industry was in the range of $24 to $30 billion. A number of further refinements were done such as continuous replenishment (CRP), just in time, customer relationship management and so on. New (New, 1997) has shown that a number of organisations embraced the concept of SCM. Some of the companies that started early were Hewlett-Packard in 1993, Whirlpool in 1992 with 20 percent reduction in inventory, lead time of 5 days and product availability up to 95 %; Wal-Mart in 1995, West Co., Becton Dickinson in 1990, Georgia-Pacific Corp. in 1994 with $ 20 million savings per year from freight handling and others. Models of SCM SCM combines a number of key supply business processes such as Customer service Management, Procurement, Product development and Commercialization, Manufacturing flow management/support, Physical Distribution, Outsourcing/ Partnerships and Performance Measurement (Cox, 1997). Different models for SCM have been proposed based on the activities involved and these are strategic, tactical, and operational. Strategic: Refers to the Strategic network optimisation and this includes the number, size and location of distribution centres, warehouses and facilities. Model suggests developing strategic partnerships with distributors, suppliers and customers with two way communication and information flow (Gattorna, 1998). Tactical: Deals with decision making related to production, contracts, scheduling and planning. Includes strategy for transportation, frequency and routes and benchmarking against competitors (Basnet et all, 2004). Operational: Covers daily activities such as production, node distribution, production scheduling, demand planning and forecasting for the organisation and suppliers (Heng et all, 2005). All these models have a common set of drivers such as the bull whip effect and the quick response practices. Bull Whip Effect The Bullwhip Effect occurs in forecast driven channels. This refers to an amplifying effect that is inherent in supply chains that try to maintain a buffer stock so that any upsurge in demand does not result in ‘stock out’ situations The effect can occur due to uncertainties in the supply chain with regards to cost, schedules, political fallout, scarcity and other factors (Lee, 1997). The bullwhip effect, induced within the supply chain greatly increases the level of risk for each partner. The further the partner is from the marketplace, the greater is the likely increase in risk. So for the supply chain as a whole to remain competitive, it is essential that each value stream be engineered to minimise unnecessary bullwhip (Towill, 2005). Figure 1 gives an illustration of the bull whip effect. Figure 1. Generation and propagation of the bullwhip effect in a clothing supply chain (Towill, 2005) Bull Whip effect causes excess or low inventories, increases cost of production and transportation and raises costs to the consumer. Mark and Spencer ended up losing a sizeable market share when they tried to reduce the costs by shaving 1 per cent off the factory price of overseas suppliers at the cost of greatly reduced flexibility (Holmström, 2002). Some methods used to solve this effect are: level scheduling or LS with constant orders placed on the shop floor; pure chase where orders equal to external demand placed on the shop floor and pragmatic demand management or DM that is a strategy based on a compromise approach (Andrew, 2004). Quick Response (QR) Quick Response (QR) where retailers, buyers and suppliers work together as partners to respond more quickly to consumer needs by sharing information (Lummus, 1999). The need for QR arises when the information flows in a supply chain become distorted and create a bullwhip effect where orders to suppliers have a larger variance than sales to the buyer, creating demand distortion which then travels upstream and gets amplified along the way. A supply chain member that is privy to only its immediate order information will be deceived by the distorted and amplified demand information (Cox, 1999). This has serious cost implications for the mislead member and the rest of the supply chain in the form of increased inventory holdings, greater warehousing expenses, higher manufacturing costs, and additional transportation costs (McMichael, 2000). Figure 3. Elements of Quick Response (Ross et all, 1998) QR is a consumer driven business strategy of cooperative planning used by supply chain partners, to ensure that the right goods, are in the right place, at the right time, using IT and flexible manufacturing to eliminate inefficiencies from the entire supply chain. It is a cooperative effort between retailers and their suppliers and its purpose is to maintain the optimum inventory level for the entire supply chain by using computer-based communication and efficient (McMichael, 2000). A study by McMicheal (McMichael, 2000) of the 119 billion AS$ Australian retail market showed that 20, 000 jobs had been lost along with 500million AS$ due to bull whip effects forcing the Victorian State Government to initiate the TCF QR pilot program. The program instituted EDI and system integration to enhance information flow and this resulted in better understanding of the demands and quicker response and this produced lesser upheavals in the work orders with accurate forecasting and demand and stable pricing. SCM in Developing Countries Msimangira (Msimangira 2003) has suggested that SCM in developing countries has not matured as much as the developed countries and this is because of a lack of managers to recognise the importance and also because the top management does not support the effective development of SCM functions. In some developing countries of Africa, purchasing is not recognised as a profession and the purchasing activity is not centralised but buy decisions are made by various departments. Msimangira has conducted research to show that a majority of organisations do not have a purchasing policy manual and purchasing is regarded as an extension of the finance or accounting department. The importance of purchasing is realised only when there is a stock out of items. Among the problems reported by Msimangira are organisations do not critically evaluate vendors, there is no market survey, poor inventory management and so on. On the other hand, Ruben (Ruben et all, 2007) has reported that supply chain integration has become a major strategy in sourcing fresh vegetables in emerging East Asian countries. The study examined Huacheng supermarkets in Nanjing City of China, TOPS supermarkets in Bankok Thailand. The results showed that small suppliers delivered in small lots, in non-refrigerated trucks, non-standardised crates and high variations in price and quality and it took up to 50 people to grade the produce. The small suppliers were also unreliable and stock outs was a frequent problem. In 1998, Ahold initiated the World Fresh distribution centre named TOPS where a group of preferred suppliers was created. These suppliers were offered long term delivery contracts based on quality, quantity and prices; use of standardised crates, trimming and grading and refrigerated transport if required, backward chain control to trace the produce backward. This arrangement produced about 40% reduction in the costs, reduction in lead-time, assured quality. Figure 4 shows the optimisation in variable costs and the higher margins that were realised by eliminating middlemen and reducing the transportation costs. Figure 4. Supply chain cost analysis of tomato from Nanjing in Yuan/kg (Ruben et all, 2007) This shows that though the market in developing country is not mature, it can be guided towards efficiency by instilling a proper culture of SCM practices. SCM in Grocery/ Retail, Music and Toy Markets This section provides an analysis of how different market segments have adapted SCM practices. Instances of the grocery/ retail markets and market for music and toys have been examined. Grocery/ Retail Market: Holmström (Holmström, 2002) has researched the status of European grocery suppliers who face unique problems of catering to country and region specific variations in the product demands. With variations in product demands, the service and efficiency for large and central regions can be maintained but severe problems are encountered in the smaller markets. The variations increase the transaction volumes by a factor of 10. Holmström has argued that the key business decision for the supplier is whether to provide good service for customers in all regional markets or not. If yes, then he argues that supply service levels are not based on sales volume but are provided according to the role of individual products in specific markets. An argues that an extended local supply chain with a complex “many-to-many” supply chain structure, cannot achieve good service efficiently and that a hub-and-spoke supply chain structure is a viable alternative. Music Industry: Graham (Graham et all, 2004) has prepared a case study on the impact of the Internet on the supply chain for music which is a 38 billion US$ industry. According to Graham, the music industry was dominated by the big 5 recording companies: EMI, Sony, Universal-Vivendi, Time Warner and Bertelsmann BMG and these companies control the supply chain of about 90% of the market and prevent artists from distributing their own music. With the wide spread use of the Internet, illegally downloading and distributing music and piracy has undermined the dominance of the big 5 recording companies. The authors suggest that companies such as Amazon have proved that there is no real need to have a physical, brick and mortar store and thus the supply chain becomes truncated as these middle-agents become redundant. This dilutes the position of the big companies and with the increase in piracy, the bottom lines of these companies as well as the artists face erosion due to lost sales. The authors suggest that a number of virtual companies would be quick to step in and act as virtual coordinators between the artists and the consumers and this changes the music supply chain. Figure 5 provides an illustration of the traditional and the future supply chain. Figure 5. Traditional and the Future Music Supply Chain (Graham et all, 2004) Toys: Wong (Wong et all, 2005) has studied the SCM practices in the toy store industry. Wong reports that the toys market is extremely volatile and seasonal in nature and is driven by variable and unpredictable demands, very short and specific selling-windows and short product-life-cycles. The industry has incurred relatively higher costs on obsolete inventory, lost sales and markdown as compared to other industries. To survive, these industries face a very unique challenge that is to provide the right toys at the right quantity at the right stores during the very short selling windows and to frequently provide creative and yet price competitive toys. The toy industry includes traditional toys such as dolls, soldiers, cars, planes, puzzles, lego bricks, etc, as well as video games. Toddlers to pre teens are the main buy decision makers and the point of sales is department stores, supermarkets, hypermarkets, discounters and toy specialists. There are three types of retailers: just-in-time (JIT) or pull retailers, main-order retailers and one-off or push retailers and they use different SCM practices. JIT or pull retailers are toy specialists and discounters who use 20% push and 80% pull practices. Main order retailers are department stores, discounters and hypermarkets with 60 % push and 40% pull while one off retailers or push retailers. Studies and interviews by the researchers have suggested that these retailers wish to reduce the risk of inventory and markdown by implementing the demand-driven (JIT) model and therefore initiating supply chain initiatives such as accurate response, cross-docking, and CPFR. Figure 6 gives an illustration that details the SCM practices for three different types of toy retailers. Figure 6. SCM practices for three different types of toy retailers (Wong et all, 2005) The study concludes by arguing that the volatile nature for toy demand and these retailers’ wishes require toy manufactures to be more market responsive; however, most toy manufacturers have responded with the traditional mass production strategy and low market responsive. New Trends in Global SCM As per the study reported by James (James, 2004) SCM applications are moving towards web based platforms that can be accessed through desktops, laptops, hand held and wireless devices using GSM connectivity. Online shopping systems are also integrated with the SCM applications. Connectivity and security play a very important role in such applications as employees should be able to access and process information from any source in the world and consumers should be able to place orders and pay for them and both need to be protected from online frauds and hacking. Hollis (Hollis, 2004) has analysed the trends in the new applications and the findings pointed out that SCM practices are increasingly moving towards a pull model and the products are imagined as continuously flowing. Fig 7 illustrates the global SCM trends. Figure 7. Global Supply Chain Trends (Hollis, 2004) Part 2: Case Studies of SCM Implementation This section provides case studies of SCM implementation. The Tesco Meat Supply Chain case is a successful implementation of the external supply chain of vendors that responded to widespread panic in consumption of meat products while the General Pump Corporation case is a successful modification of the internal process flow and manufacturing supply chain that had to respond quickly to market demands and reduce waste. The third case study provides overviews of a few disasters in SCM implementations. Tesco Meat Supply Chain Case Study – Successful Implementation The case study analyses the Tesco Meat Supply Chain. Tesco is is the largest food retailer in UK and has stores in France, Ireland, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. The group turnover in 2002 was more than 22 million GBP and the company has more than 240, 000 employees. The company sources its food products such as vegetables, groceries and meat from various suppliers across the globe (Lindgreen et all, 2003). Problem Statement Tesco had problems with its meat supply division. In 1996, there was a huge scare across the world from reported diseases such as the mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalophathies), foot and mouth disease and other epidemics that had swamped the meat industry. Wide concerns were raised in the media and the public about the hygiene and safe procedures used in the meat processing industry and this resulted in Competition Commission code that set guidelines in the safe practices regarding meat processing. These codes were very strict and difficult to follow and there were many gaps in the Tesco supply chain that would make compliance very difficult. Tesco relied on hundreds of small time animal farmers and slaughter houses and it became increasingly evident that the existing meat supply chain was too haphazard and compliance with the codes would be very difficult. The weekly requirements of meat products are estimated at 6000 cattle, 80, 000 pigs, 20, 000 lambs and 1, 200, 000 chickens. An analysis of the existing meat supply chain is shown in the Figure 1. .Figure 1. Existing Meat Supply Chain of Tesco (Spekman et all, 2001) There were multiple supply chains and while the farmer was the main source, the products flowed from multiple mechanisms such as dealers, live rings auctions, electronic auctions, and direct sale and through cooperatives. To cater for excess demands and because of price differentials, livestock was also imported. The livestock was slaughtered in abattoirs and the processes meat went through multiple point of sales before the meat reached the consumers. The problems statement was that the existing meat supply chain had to be redesigned to comply with the Competition Commission code regarding quality and hygiene. Solution A research team from Tesco, interviewed managers with face-to-face interviews and through questionnaires and this resulted in an understanding of the complex chain (Hoek, 2002). A partnership was developed with the animal farmers and they needed to comply with the Standard Code of Ethics, framed by Tesco. The code of ethics was based on principles enshrined in the Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb agreement, Farm Quality Assurance Scheme, Code of Recommendations for Cattle Welfare (Basnet, 2004). Suppliers were treated as partners and they had to follow strict guidelines such as ensuring animals were killed with the least painful methods, animal feeds used the least chemicals and anti microbial, responsible use of medicines, slaughter houses complied with the standards for meat processing, storage and hygiene and so on (Cox, 1999). Tesco then redesigned the supply chain and this is illustrated in Figure 2. Figure 2. Redesigned Tesco Meat Supply Chain (Holmström, 2002) Tesco developed a centralised distribution system and bought directly from suppliers who had to be certified by Tesco's Quality Assurance program. The meat products are distributed directly to the central warehouse and distributed to the retail outlets and the role of wholesalers and distributor has been greatly diminished and made non relevant. The redesigned supply chain assured the quality of meat products, ensured safety and hygiene for consumers, created a reliable supply base for Tesco and gave assured business for suppliers. General Pump Corporation Case Study - Successful Implementation General Pump Corporation started as a distributor of high pressure positive displacement plunger pumps. Through its subsidiary Noramco, it designs high pressure nozzles and pump thermal protectors (Kumar et all, 2001). Problem Statement The company used an ERP system with General Pump and Noramco as separate facilities. Forecasting was done at General Pump and interplant orders were processed to pull products from Noramco to General Pump using the MRP Program. The system could not respond to changes in demand and when demand was lesser than forecast, work orders already generated based on the forecast where not adjusted to reflect demand drop. This created an artificial increase in capacity requirement and inventory. According to Quayle (Quayle, 2005) work orders generated were for expected demands and not net requirements. Inventory correction measures were done every now and then and corrections were done in the work orders to adjust for the excess inventory. This resulted in gross shortages for certain items as they had a long lead-time and the production teams responded by producing more items that lead to excess inventory. The problem statement was that the inventory had to be reduced by creating an accurate forecasting method, smoothening the production flow and by eliminating unnecessary steps. Figure 4 gives the original process flow. In the illustration, X means steps that were subsequently eliminated. Figure 4. Original Process Flow (Kumar et all, 2001, p. 418) Solution The original process flow had more than 50 steps and these were analysed for the value addition and the wasteful steps were eliminated so that the final flow had 17 steps The team analysed the consumption patterns and found that more nozzles were sold in the summer construction season but the production level had to be maintained throughout the year since there was a capacity limit at Noramco. An accurate response process was implemented that allowed the company to predict probability of sales by nozzles and balanced the capacity during off season period. They brought in concepts of Kanban, lean manufacturing and synchronous manufacturing (Narayanan et all, 2000). Figure 5. Redesigned Process Flow (Kumar et all, 2001, p. 419) The redesigned supply chain with the enhanced forecasting method allowed optimum work orders where excess inventory was eliminated. Accurate forecasting ensured that work orders for the required nozzle type and quantity were raised as per the market demand and the redesigned process flow ensured timely production of nozzles. Failed Cases of SCM Implementation This section provides an analysis of failed SCM implementations across different industry segments. The cases are analysed for problem and reasons for failure. Nike Supply Chain Disaster Koch (Koch, 2004) analysed the supply chain disaster at Nike. The company has a global presence with a turnover of 20 Billion US$ and makes sports shoes and sports apparel and has a market share of 39%. Nike was using a demand planning software made by i2 and problems with the software, poor understanding of how to use the software caused wrong work orders to be placed with the subsidies. Excess orders were placed for the ‘Air Garnett’ shoe models while lesser order were placed for the ‘Air Jordan’ shoe model and this created a loss of 100 million US$ besides causing a 20% loss in the share prices besides other losses. An analysis has revealed that i2's predictive demand application and its supply chain planner that maps the manufacturing of specific products used different business rules and stored data in different formats. This made integration of systems difficult. The i2 software had to be extensively customized so that it could communicate with Nike's legacy systems. This resulted in long delays and it took almost 1 minute to record a single entry. Since Nike had millions of product numbers, the system frequently crashed. The system ignored some orders, duplicated others, deleted ordering data six to eight weeks after it was entered and this made it impossible for planners to understand why the order was placed with a subsidiary. The market demand for Air Jordan’s was more while it was less for Air Garnett’s and the system reversed the numbers so that more of Air Garnett’s and less of Air Jordan’s were produced. The WebVan Story WebVan was an on-line grocer that was backed by Goldman Sachs and others. The business model was such that registered users would login to the website, select the groceries they wanted, pay through online payment systems and the company would despatch the groceries to the users address (The WebVan Story, January 2006). The grocery business typically has very low margins and an online grocery store is expected to have wafer thin margins (James, 2004). The company raised billions of dollars by going public and then went on to erect heavily automated warehouses that cost up to 30 million US$ each. The management decided to automate the whole business so that once the order was placed, the order would be processed by the automated warehouse that would arrange to pack and despatch the shipment. The management did not realise that huge volumes was needed to break even with the capital costs. The high volumes were never realised and the company went bankrupt within a year. Other SCM Disasters There have been quite a few disasters in SCM implementation and these are given in Table 1. It should be noted that most of these incidents happened before 2000, when SCM software had not yet matured. While some of these disasters happened due to software glitches, the other disasters happened because the management made bad decisions and it was too dependant on the promised wonders that software alone could deliver the solutions. Table 1. Some SCM disasters (Supply Chain Digest, January 2006) Conclusion SCM started in the 1980 in US when the textile market needed to reduce inefficiencies in the procurement of raw materials and found that out of the 66 weeks lead time, 4o weeks were spent in different warehouses. The paper examined different models of SCM and how modern organisations have developed SCM practices. Important techniques such as bull whip effect, Quick Response were analysed along with SCM in developing countries and new trends in global SCM. The paper also examined case studies on two successful implementations of SCM practices at Tesco Meat Supply Chain and General Pump Corporation along with a number of failed SCM case studies. References Andrew Cox, 2004, Power value and supply chain management, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 9(4), pp: 167-175. 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Supply chain management practices in toy supply chains. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal. vol 10, no. 5, pp: 367–378 Read More