Sale and Operations Planning

Client / Profile:

National Retailer with outsourced warehouse / delivery provider

Issue:

TAARS was brought in by a major retailer when their head office staff, including the MD, were spending time labouring at their newly outsourced warehouse in the run up to Christmas. Flatline inventory receivals had been forecast.

Cause (Benefit):

3rd Party Logistics Provider was briefed in isolation, with no account for significant seasonal peaks in through put. Weekly container loads could fluctuate from 30 to 300+ yet the contract assumed flat line numbers

Response:

TAARS implemented a series of forward looking operational reports to enable warehouse storage capacity and staffing to be planned, based around periodic S&OP meetings. These converted sales units into logistics equivalents. Reports covered both inbound and outbound activity looking forward 12 weeks.

Outcome:

Warehouse capacity for peaks and troughs in demand were planned for in advance. Substantially reducing the costs of additional warehouse space hire and enabling standard lead times to be maintained.

Future promotional periods saw a significant increase in gross sales as the logistics network was able to maintain store in-stock levels and therefore missed sales from out of stocks were negligible.

Learning:

Logistics can generally handle any sales peak as long as the forecast is relatively accurate and sufficient forward planning is provided.