Product availability is a key measure of both internal and external performance. Customers demand to receive their ordered products on time and in full. For retailers, empty shelves mean lost sales and disgruntled customers. For e-tailers, failure to deliver promises loses a customer forever. In a competitive marketplace, poor availability means that customers will go elsewhere.
Product availability is influenced by several elements, including stock levels throughout the supply chain, reorder algorithms, planning and forecasting, reliability and general management capability.
Crimson & Co has worked with many companies to improve their availability levels, taking both ‘point solution’ views to fix immediate, operation-critical problems and wider, more inclusive perspectives to take into account the effect each element in the supply chain has on each other.
Retailers have become increasingly aware of the disproportionate cost of back door operations within stores, covering receiving and unloading vehicles, identifying products, storing products, moving products to the sales floor, unpacking, stacking and returning packaging. As a result, much of the work traditionally carried out in store is being pushed back to the DC.
We help retailers to identify the back door operation costs and develop business cases for distribution streamlining and the linking of the DCs to the stores. These include the design of new processes and supporting infrastructures, which we then help to implement.
supply chain consulting
procurement consulting
