It is mentioned in the bold we need prepare a case similar to L.L. Bean which i

Question

It is mentioned in the bold we need prepare a case similar to L.L. Bean which i pasted in the trail.

Kindly arrange to revert today itself else as tonight i need to submit this assignement.

Assiggnement on supplychain management...Detailed analysis requested.

"Please write a case similar to L. L. Bean. The context can be from fashion industry, technology product (mobile phones, electronic retail shop etc.), products with perishable demand like bakery products, restaurants food items, new book launch in crosswords etc. Also do the analysis on the same.

Desired Deatails attached----

L.L. Bean, Inc.

Item Forecasting and Inventory Management

“ten you order an item from an L.L. Bean catalog and we’re out of stock, I'm the guy to blame. And if we end up liquidating a bunch of women’s wool cashmere blazers, it's my IaulI. No one u:riderstands how tough it is." Mark Fasold, Vice President—Inventory Management, was describing the challenge of item forecasting at L.L. Bean. “forecasting demand at the aggregate level is a piece of cakmif we're running short of expectations, we just dip deeper into our customer list and send out some more catalogs. But we have to decide how many clamors shirts and how many chino trousers to buy, and if we’re too high on one and too low on the other, it’s no solace to know that we were exactly right on the averagé. Top management understands this in principle, but they are understandably disturbed that errors at the item level are po large.

'W a caalog business like ours, you really capture demand. Thafs the good news. The bad news is, you learn what a loury job you're doing trying to match demand with supply. Its not tike that in a department store, say, where a customer my come in looking for a dress shirt and lets the display of available shirlr generate the demand for a particular its Or if a customer has some particular-item in mind but its not available, he or she my just walk out of the store. department store you never know the real demand or the consequences of undentocking. But In business every sale is generated by a customer demanding a particular item, either by mail or by phone. If we haven't got it, and the customer cancels the order, we know it.”

Rod Fessenden, ger—Inventory Systems, added: ”We know that forecast errors are inevitable. Competition, the economy, weather are all factors. But demanéL at thé item level is also at:fected-by customer behavior, which is very hard to predict, or even to explain in retrospect Every so often some item takes o£f and becomes a runaway, hr exceeding our demand forecasts. Once in a while we can detect the trmd early on and, with a cooperative vendor, get' more product manufactured in a h and chase demand; most of the time, however, the runaways leave us just turning customers away. And for every runaway, there's a dog item that sells way below expectations and that you couldn’t even give away to custc»ztezs."

Annual costs of lost sales and backorders were conservatively estimated to be $11 million; costs associated Mth having too much of the wrong inventory were ari additional $10 million.

1 In 1912 Leon Leonwopd Bean invented the Maine Hunting Shoe (a combination of lightweight leather uppers and rubber bottoms). He obtained a list of noruesidWt Maine hunting

mail-order circular, set up shop in his brother’s basement in a naaonwide mail-order business. The inauguration o1 the U.S. Post Office’s domestic parcel post service in that year provided a means of delivering orders to customers. When L.L. Bean died in 1967, at the age of 94, sales had reached $4.75 million, his company employed 200 peopler d           was distributed to a mailing list of 600,000 people.

L.L.'s Golden Rule had been “Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit, treat your customers like human beings, and they’ll always come back for more.” When Leon Gorman, L.L.’s grmdson; succetned him as president in 1967, he sought to expand and modernize theHusiness— without deviating from his grandfather’s Golden Rule. By 1991, L.L. Beam, Inc. was a major catnloger, manufacturer, and retailer in the outdoor sporting specialty field: Catalog sales in 1990 were $528 million, with an additional $71 million in sales from the compafiy“s 50,000 square-foot retail store in Preeport. Twenty-two different catalogs (often referred to ar ’4éoks” by company employees 114 million pieces in all—were mailed ‘that year. There were six million active customers.

The mail-order business had been gtving way to telephone orders after the company installed nationwide “800” service in 1986. By 1991, 80%« of all orders came inby telephone.

Major direct-mail compeators included Land’s End, Eddie Bauer, Talbot’s, and Orvis. A 1991 Consumer Reports survey on customer satisfaction with “mai1•order” companies found L.L. Bean heading the list for overall satisfaction in every category for which they offered merchandise.

In explaining why L.L. Bean had not expanded its retail operahons beyond the one store in Freeport, Leon Gorman contrasted the direct-marketing (catalog) and retail businesses. "'The two approaches require very different kinds of management. Mailmrder marketers are very analytic, quantitahvely oriented. Retailers have to be creative, promohonal, pizzazzy, merchandise-orienied. It’s tough to assemble one management team that can handle both functions.”*

Product Lines

L.L. Bed's product line war classified hierarchically (see Exhibit 1). At the highest level of aggregation be Merchandise Groups: men’s and women’s accessories, men’s' and women’s apparel, men’s and women’s I-ootwear, camping equipment, etc Within each Group were Demand Cmters; for instance, women’s apparel had as Demand Centen lmit shirls, sweaters, pantr, skirts, jackets and pullovers, etc. Each Demand Center was further broken down into Item Sequences; for example, women’s sweaters consistnd of Midnight Mesa Handknit Cardigans, Indian Point Pullovers, Lambswool Turtlenecks, and about twenty other products. Item Sequences were further broken down into individual items, distinguished primarily by color; it was at this item level that forecasts had to be issued and, ultimately, purchase commitments had to be made.2 About 6,000 items appeared in oneor another of the catalogs that were issued in the course of a year.

Exhibit 1
Merchandise Groups Demand Centers Men's Accessories Women's Accessories knit shirts Men's Apparel e pants Women's Apparel sweaters Men's Footwear skirts Women's Footwear jackets Camping Equipment pullovers etc. etc.

Item Sequences Items
Midnight Mesa handknit cardigan
. lambswool

azure
turtleneck heather

Indian Point X eggshell pullovers,etc.

Explanation / Answer

I am providing you a case study on a Restaurant chain and their supply chain management issues.

Maintaining efficient, cost-effective operations throughout your supply chain is essential to continued success, when you are one of the largest pizza chain in the world, with more than 2,000 restaurants worldwide.

Even though growth was going as expected, the Pizza company XYZ was still hampered by supply chain inventory, visibility and accuracy challenges that were impacting its businesses.

The director, operations services said they were having to use outside storage for inventory which ultimately ended up having to be written off because its shelf life ran out before they could ship to restaurants. This created a domino effect that caused them to pay more for everything in the supply chain. But without proper statistics, they had no way of knowing how those truckload orders were impacting everything else.

The company was also facing substantial increases in commodity prices, fuel and the minimum wage which were the three major elements in the food and restaurant industries. Complicating those challenges were the limited-time consumer offers, which required immediate supply chain reactions to the temporary spikes in demand. The process was inefficient and losing money as all of these issues were being addressed manually with spreadsheets, maps and decisions based on personal experience.

A solution was needed to align all the facets of the supply chain in order to reduce inventory levels and eliminate outside storage and inventory write-offs.

XYZ Chooses Five Supply Chain Packages to Address the Issues

After a thorough review of various packages and modules, XYZ selected AB Associates and a combined package of its supply chain solutions namely Replenishment, Transportation Procurement, Transportation Planning and Execution, Warehouse Management and Supply Chain Intelligence.

As XYZ had a small IT department, they didn’t have the luxury of choosing different modules from different vendors and integrating them. So all the modules were chosen from one vendor who could then grow the package with us as time passed.

AB Associates was also selected for their seamless integration and coordination made possible by their Supply Chain Process Platform. This creates a central data storage center that provides consistent inventory data and performance metrics that can be shared by XYZ’s entire supply chain.

Once the supply chain solution provider was chosen, XYZ then planned a phased implementation of the individual solutions:

First was the centralized purchasing/in-bound inventory, addressed by AB’s Replenishment and Transportation Procurement solutions. Next was the warehouse management, optimized by AB’s Warehouse Management and Supply Chain Intelligence solutions. The final phase was outbound delivery, covered by AB’s Transportation Planning & Execution module.

By covering the entire supply chain, the full-spectrum perspective made possible by sharing information through AB’s Supply Chain Process Platform meant that every department was able to respond to actions and decisions made anytime and anywhere else in the chain.

Fresher Ingredients meant Better Pizza made possible by a more Efficient Supply Chain

Implementation of AB’s solutions provided better visibility and reduced expenses, improved efficiency and productivity in every part of the supply chain.

They were able to manage inventory levels accurately, efficiently and more dynamically based on actual need—and that has resulted in reduction of overall inventory levels, a 10-15% reduction in freight spend after just six months of live runtime on the system. Automated traceability provided the means to address improved product quality and FDA compliance. Other benefits accrued were 15.7% reduction in inventory, 66% reduction in outside storage costs and 83% lower inventory write-offs

AB Delivers Fresh Solutions In An Ongoing Partnership

During implementation, XYZ discovered the additional need for high-density route planning to handle a large number of stops. Since this was more than the system was originally designed to accommodate AB developed new, customized algorithms to address this issue. Going forward there would be more areas where AB could provide solutions and this partnership proved to be a wise decision in the long run. Future plans includes enhanced supply chain intelligence and Labor Management and Labor Scheduling solutions for workforce performance and schedule optimization.

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