Barilla & Harvard Business School.

Nowadays, manufacturing and services firms face growing challenges to adjoin profit margins amidst increasingly fiercer competition. under such circumstances, industry analysts and give orbit experts suggest producers and service providers to lift more effective supply and demand planning, management, and execution as the way to unlocking signifi croupet gains in margins. By definition, Search CIO (2007) defines SCM as the management of information, materials, and pay along a chain of process from suppliers to manufacturing businesss and then from manufacturers to customers.The interests in the treatment of supply chain management occur since it relates to costs reduction in all aspects of business process especially regarding the inventory reduction that suggests manufacturer produce goods when needed. The situation highlights that supply chain management will promote lead time (time-to-market) of particular products, thus enabling all parties deep down an organization t o manage their resources more effectively. Concerning the issue, this paper will describe supply chain management issue in samphire spA, an Italian manufacturer that sells their products to its retailers in the main via third-party distributors.The competition in the market has caused unfavor fit situation for samphire during late 1980s when the company faced unpredictable demands from its distributors. 2. What atomic number 18 the reasons for the increase in variability in Barillas supply chain? Barilla maintains separate supply chain because the company has two public products fresh and dry products, which required special treatment. In this situation, fresh products is mainly purchased from the two central distribution centers (CDCs) by independent agents who further channeled the products into 70 regional warehouses across Italy.Meanwhile, about two third of dry products are sold at supermarkets. Figure 1 explains the supply chain systems for Barilla. 3. How quarter Barill a cope with the increase in variability? In raise to succeed the distribution system, Barilla is known to practice the replenishment strategy, which describes an compact between Barilla and their supplier to share the data about oftenness and inventory levels to match Barilla demands (About. com, 2008).By delivering the products under the agreement with suppliers, Barilla is able to support their Just in time (JIT) distribution system, which is considered to be the best strategy to accomplish the companys mission of having increased customers satisfaction. 4. What is the advert of transferring demand information across the supply chain? By share information between Barilla and their suppliers, there are positive impacts since the conclave of JIT and replenishment strategy supports the demand fluctuations, reduced inventory level at warehouse, decreased stock-out levels etc.5. Can the Vendor Managed Inventory strategy solve the operational problems faced by Barilla? In Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) strategy, the suppliers wee greater responsibility over the supply since they are required to coiffe the delivery frequency and inventory levels in enunciate to maintain the hold stock levels in warehouses. In addition, the practice of this system also serves Barilla to track out-of-stocks and other performance data, previous years sales tale and trends.Therefore, the practice of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) has solved the operational problems at Barilla. 6. How can the supply chain meet conflicting goals of different partners and facilities? In order to avoid the conflict between different partners and suppliers of Barilla, the company must look into that the implementation of Just in Time system will help the maintenance of satisfaction in services, inventory levels, and stock-out levels and others in which each supplier has taken part of the system.In addition, Barilla must also ensure that inside implementation steps, the use of EDI to deliver t he inventory information is the same among suppliers so the reliability can be secured and the compatibility level can be reached. part About. com. (2008). Reduce Inventory with these 3 Supplier Partnership Strategies. Retrieved kinfolk 7, 2008 from http//logistics. about. com/od/inventoryoptimization/a/supplier_partnr. htm Hammond, Janice H. (2008). Barilla SpA (A). Harvard Business School.OBrien, Kevin and Brian Springman. (2004). Optimizing Supply Chains, Understanding Demands. Retrieved September 7, 2008 from http//www. crmbuyer. com/story/35892. hypertext mark-up language Search CIO. (2007). Supply Chain Management. Retrieved September 7, 2008 from http//searchcio. techtarget. com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci214546,00. html YAO Kao-hua, LIU Chang-chuan. (2006). An Integrated Approach for Measuring Supply Chain Performance. Journal of red-brick Accounting and Auditing. Vol. 2, No. 10