As evidence that supply chain strategies and systems are increasingly on the minds of business leaders, major publications are following developments in the field. In addition to the case study highlighted in awesomeleaders.org’s Insights last week that was published in Harvard Business Review, several other articles have appeared recently in Forbes and Wall Street Journal.
In a Forbes article titled “Is your supply chain ready for the next #DRESSGATE,” author Celia Brown uses the example of a photo of a dress that was posted on Tumblr, generating on online controversy about what color it was and resulting in thousands of orders flooding the manufacturer. The article goes on to explores how production and inventory fulfillment can be ramped up quickly and suggests ways a company can prepare for huge uplifts in demand by building a customer-centric supply chain.
Forbes.com also ran an article titled “8 Ways to Make the Supply Chain More Customer-Centric.” The author Richard Howells offers specific suggestions.
The recent article in Wall Street Journal focuses on the efforts of retailers to implement “omnichannel” retailing, which demands “a far more complex and interconnected supply chain.”
For their article “Retailers Bet Big on Retooling Their Supply Chains for E-Commerce,” authors Loretta Chao and Steven Norton interviewed several industry experts who described the challenges and high cost of adapting warehouse systems to meet online customer demand and expectations.
For some retailers this means redesigning facilities “originally equipped to send bulk shipments to a limited network of stores so that workers can quickly assemble, package and ship many small parcels to consumers in far-flung locations.”