Best Examples of supply chain management in Industry
NABISCO INC
Nabisco .Inc delivers 500 types of cookies and more than 10,000 candies to over 80,000 buyers
and spend s more than $200 million a year in transportation expenses .Unfortunately ,too many
trucks arrive or depart from their destination half empty .That is why Nabisco is pioneering a
collaborative logistics effort , so that Nabisco can share trucks , warehouse space with other
companies in order to reduce logistics cost.
WAL -MART
In 1979 Kmart was one of the leading companies in the retail industry with 1891 stores and
avaerage revenues per store of $ 7.25 milllion .At that time Wal -Mart was a small niche retailer in
South with only
229 stores and an average revenues about half of those of Kmart stores . In 10 years Wal -Mart
has transformed itself in 1992 it had the highest sales per square foot and highest inventory
turnover and operating profit of any discount retailer .Today Wal- Mart is the largest and highest
retailer in the world . The starting point was relentless focus on satisfying customer needs .Wal
-Mart s goal was to simply provide customers with access to goods when and where they want them
and to develop cost structures that enables competitive pricing .The key to achieving this goal
was to make the way company replinishes inventory the centre piece of its strategy . This was
done by using a logistics technique known as cross - docking .In this strategy, goods are
continuously delivered to Wal-Marts ware houses , from where they are dispatched to stores without
even sitting in inventory .This strategy
reduced Wal -marts cost of sales significantly and made it possible to offer everyday low price s to
their customers .
CATERPILLAR CORPORATION
The chairman and CEO of Caterpillar Corporation credits Caterpillar dealers with much of his
companys
recent success.He points out that dealers are much closer to customers than to the corporation
and can respond more rapidly to customer needs .They arrange financing when the product is
purchased and carefully monitor,repair ,and service the product.He says that"the dealer creates the
image of a company that doesn't just stand behind its product s but with its products anywhere in the
world''.Caterpillar believes that its dealer network gives the company a tremendous advantage over
its competition ,especially the big japanese construction and mining equipment manufacturers such
as
komatsu and Hitachi.
IKEA
Swedish furniture retailer Ikea ,with $9.6billion sales ,is the world largest furniture retailer .Started in
Sweden by Ingvar Kampard ,Ikea currently has 143 stores world wide .It has grown so dramatically
by "reinventing the furniture business "'. Traditionally furniture sales were split between department
stores and small locally owned shops .Typically , customers would place an order , and delivery could
take place upto two months after orders was placed.
Ikea changed tha formula by displaying all of its 10,000 products in large ware house like spaces in
out-of -town stores and keeping all of these itmes in the ware house .This was accomplished by
designing products so that they can pe packed compactly and efficiently in kits . which customers
take from the stores and assemble at home . .These kits are easy and cheap to transport , so
products can be manufactured efficiently in a small number of factories and then shipped
relatively cheaply to stores all over the world .Since Ikea has so many stores , each of of which is
very large , the company is able to take advantage of vast economies of scale . This has enabled
the firm to sell good quality furniture at price lower than that of its competitors.
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