The Faults in the Recent Project of Sainsbury :: Sainsbury Business Management Essays

The Faults in the Recent Project of SainsburyIn 2000, Sainsburys began its melody transformation programme.The grand plan includes what is arguably the largest and mostchallenging retail supply chain project in Europe. The main number unrivalled wood wasthe need to cut costs. However, internal research found that thecompanys cost-per-case was significantly higher than its nearestrivals.Sainsburys had been managing statistical distribution in the same way for morethan 40 years, which is mainframe-based warehouse management system, Its typical distribution center was almost as old. Compared to the ageof the average Tesco depot 7some yearsSainsburys depots were nearingthe end of their useful life. The old system of depots was designedfor the purposes, such as packing for meat and own-brand goods.However, it means that one store could be receiving goods from five orsix different depots in any one day, which was highly inefficient.The old delivery system was also ill-suited to chang es in nodetastes, habits and store locations. Supermarkets have to offer a widerrange of products, in small volumes and at lower prices, than in thepast, to people who shop when they need to sort of than stocking uponce a week.Today, Sainsburys carries 2.5 million cases per week from around2,000 suppliers. It also has to deliver them to 500 outlets every day,ranging from traditional large stores to little shops on previouslyuntapped territories, such as railway terminals and slip petrolstations. Given this diversity, daily waves of restocking arerequired from 5am onwards. (http//www.supplymanagement.com/archiveitem.asp?id=8784,4/4/2005)In order to service this need, Sainsbury revamped its supply chain andcreated a ace end to end supply management system.The initial timeline for the project was seven years, as thestruggling chain set about pruning a network of 25 distributioncentres to just nine facilities in cardinal regions around the UK.Another part of the plan was to buil d four fiend warehouses, two ofthem fully automated, for 400 million each.(http//www.supplymanagement.com/archiveitem.asp?id=8784, 4/4/2005)Sainsbury did it in three years, to catch up with, in some cases, andsome cases sink its rivals. Sainsburys uses a number of ITsystems to manage its supply chain, mostly within the Accentureoutsourcing deal. dispersal warehouse management systems areprovided by Manhattan Associates. Eqos has built an alerts system to cleanse stock availability in store, based on Microsoft .nettechnology. And Retek has supplied software to herald product demandin Sainsburys stores. By implementing automation, Sainsbury washoping also to avoid serviceman errors so that errors were right at thefirst time Although, Sainsbury has been working difficult to improve itssupply chain, however, the operation of its four new automated depots