Operations Management Articles Home
Quick Article Search
Contact Operations Management Articles
Operations Management Article Categories:
Branch news: Retail Special Interest Group/ Thames Valley - Lean operations Article
The article entitled: "Branch news: Retail Special Interest Group/ Thames Valley" is in the Lean operations Articles section of Operations Management Papers area...
ARTICLE DESCRIPTION: Applying Lean Principles to Reduce Supply Chain Costs in the ‘Last 50 Metres’
MORE INFO: Branch news: Retail Special Interest Group/ Thames Valley Applying Lean Principles to Reduce Supply Chain Costs in the ‘Last 50 Metres’ On Thursday 14th October, Unipart Solutions Practice hosted a workshop for the Retail Special Interest Group at their Cowley offices. The objective of this event being to demonstrate the role Lean thinking can have on improving ‘on-shelf’ availability in retail stores. Whilst, significant improvements have been made in the retail supply chain from supplier to store, the majority of costs and problems are experienced in moving products from receipt at the retail store to displaying them on shelf. Hence, the last 50 metres. The day commenced with an introduction to USP from General Manager Mike Varnom. Unipart are probably still associated in most peoples minds with the automotive industry, although they have now broadened their market. Their Lean journey began in 1995 with the Toyota model which they’ve developed into ‘The Unipart Way’, taking the experience of developing supply chain processes and practices with the likes of Jaguar, and applying these to other industry sectors. In this case the retail supply chain. Following Mike’s introduction, Phillip Matthews, described how, during his tenure as Director of Supply Chain Transformation at Boots Retail, he led a programme to redesign Boots retail supply chain. Boots pharmacy supply chain had historically offered a next day service for the replenishment of dispensary stocks, with orders placed up to 17:30 being delivered before 09:00 the following day. Taking this as a model of what could be achieved Philip described how Boots set about the redesign of their distribution supply chain. A key factor of its success was identifying that the process for replenishing everyday items had to differ from that for promotional events. This led to the development of two replenishment models, Lean for the everyday items and Agile for promotional events. I’m sure that those of us who attended this event didn’t expect to have to stack supermarket shelves. But, this was exactly what we ended up doing, in a practical demonstration of how changes in product presentation, packaging, documentation and delivery processes can reduce the time and work involved in store replenishment. After experiencing the practical problems for ourselves, Martin Green of USP explained his view that achieving sustainable change in the retail supply chain was dependent upon people, processes and systems. Take the opportunity to read further in his own article published in this edition of Control. This very informative and enjoyable day ended with an open debate on the issues raised during the days presentations. David Aldridge, FIOM
PUBLISHER: Institute of Operations Management
Page number: 8 Word count: 450
Vol 30 - No 08 - December 2004/January 2005
The article can be downloaded in full from the publisher's site i.e. the Institute of Operations Management.
Thank you for searching on Operations Management Articles.co.uk for Lean operations article entitled: Branch news: Retail Special Interest Group/ Thames Valley in the Operations Management / Lean operations Articles and Papers Category.