Canal De Suministro
Enviado por hazael09 • 26 de Septiembre de 2012 • 685 Palabras (3 Páginas) • 457 Visitas
on price promotions. One recent study of the U.S.
food industry estimated that poor coordination
among supply chain partners was wasting $30 bil-
lion annually. Supply chains in many other indus-
tries suffer from an excess of some products and a
shortage of others owing to an inability to predict
long life cycles. But their stability invites competi-
tion, which often leads to low profit margins.
To avoid low margins, many companies intro-
duce innovations in fashion or technology to give
customers an additional reason to buy their offer-
ings. Fashion apparel and personal computers are
obvious examples, but we also see
Before devising a supply chain,
consider the nature of the
demand for your products.
successful product innovation where
we least expect it. For instance, in
the traditionally functional category
of food, companies such as Ben &
Jerry’s, Mrs. Fields, and Starbucks
Coffee Company have tried to gain
an edge with designer flavors and
innovative concepts. Century Prod-
demand. One department store chain that regularly
had to resort to markdowns to clear unwanted mer-
chandise found in exit interviews that one-quarter
of its customers had left its stores empty-handed
because the specific items they had wanted to buy
were out of stock.
Why haven’t the new ideas and technologies led
to improved performance? Because managers lack
a framework for deciding which ones are best for
their particular company’s situation. From my ten
years of research and consulting on supply chain is-
sues in industries as diverse as food, fashion appar-
el, and automobiles, I have been able to devise such
a framework. It helps managers understand the na-
ture of the demand for their products and devise the
supply chain that can best satisfy that demand.
The first step in devising an effective supply-
chain strategy is therefore to consider the nature of
the demand for the products one’s company sup-
plies. Many aspects are important – for example,
product life cycle, demand predictability, product
variety, and market standards for lead times and
service (the percentage of demand filled from in-
stock goods). But I have found that if one classifies
products on the basis of their demand patterns,
they fall into one of two categories: they are either
primarily functional or primarily innovative. And
each category requires a distinctly different kind of
supply chain. The root cause of the problems plagu-
ing many supply
...