Supply and Chain Management Supply

Supply and Chain Management Supply Chain Management ACME Printing & Copier Company What must the new warehouse design be capable of doing? The new warehouse design should be in a position of having an oversight of the information, materials as well as the finances and monitoring the way they move to their customers. The warehouse should be capable of coming up with measures that lead to the reduction of inventory and an increase of the order pick up to five times the initial rate.

The keeping of inventory should be well coordinated and integrated into the warehouse to make sure that the chain of supply is well managed. Moreover, the warehouse should be capable of updating the systems of software with interfaces of the Web which compete favorably with the providers of applications which are based on the Web. By so doing, the warehouse will rest assured that there will be a service provided to all the clients in the chain of supply of the printers and the rest of the products.

Therefore the warehouse should be capable of monitoring three things and act on them. These include: the flow of finances, product and information in the warehouse. 2. What key question would the design team have been prudent in asking BEFORE any final design changes were cast in stone? Before coming to action on the changes to be implemented, it would be a prudent way for the team to ask themselves what areas really need adjustment.

Action will work on well after a careful research has been carried out to monitor the weak areas of operation. This will save the warehouse from assumptions which may not really give a reflection on the matters which need to be addressed. The activities involved in directing the flow of the products to the customers should be the main area of focus before coming up with an actionable decision plan to effect the changes needed for optimum performance.

Specifically, the team should ask themselves what they can do to make the existing system as effective or efficient as possible without spending so much capital having in mind that automation is not the solution to all problems and again having a big warehouse also has its disadvantages and this was especially important before undertaking to close the 5 regional distribution centers that were present. 3. The case states that put-a-way staff had difficulty putting material away even though there were lots of partially filled slots or locations.

What can you tell about how this center is operating from storage and picking standpoint? Difficulties in putting materials away could be as a result of lack of clear monitoring of flows expected for a sustainable supply chain. There is needed therefore to exercise some measures of control in the supply chain of the products. This however is not just enough; there is a need to establish when different controls are to be applied.

Without this, the distribution center could experience problems in dealing with the challenges involved in the supply process. This is a clear indication that data and information was not shared upstream and downstream with the customers. Supply chain management procedures have always shown the ability to change from time to time. It is expected that the applications of supply chain should permit all parties involved to well manage and control the current resources as well as the needs in the future.

This will make sure that there is no backtrackings and bottlenecks existing between the center operations and the distribution centers. Therefore, along with establishing efficiency, particular levels of efficiency should be maintained. Put-a-way is also supposed to be done on demand a system commonly referred to as slotting. 4.

What do you think were some of the reasons for the failure? The main reason of failure could have been attributed to lack of process monitoring, financially, product flow as well as the information required for directing the operations of supply in the warehouse. There was also lack of efficiency of the facilities. Another striking feature that was responsible for the failure was the depressed employees who could not coordinate the functions of the system well.

Increased inventory keeping was also a major cause of the failure realized in this case. The cause of all these was the lack of real time inventory system since nothing was electronic. 5. In retrospect what might have been justified at the very beginning of this redesign project? Increased levels of inventory and difficulties experienced in getting places for storage justified the need of redesigning the process. This was evident in the way unpicked tickets were returned to the warehouse office.

This completely showed lack of information pertinent to information, product and finance flow. The flow information which involved the transmission of orders as well as updating the delivery status was lacking in the chain of supply. That is what saw the hundreds of tickets printed unpicked and thus returned to the warehouse. Credit terms, payment schedules, arrangement of title ownership and consignment flow were indeed a major problem. Moreover, all parties did not seem to be involved in any way and therefore the request of the customer was not sufficed.

All that are needed in a chain manufacturers or suppliers, other important parties to the process are the transporters,.