Supply Chain Management for M&S

Supply Chain Management
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Contents
Introduction..................................................................................................................................3
Customer service and inventory......................................................................................................3
Transportation & LSPs....................................................................................................................5
Warehousing & capacity..................................................................................................................7
Strategy and Competitive advantage...............................................................................................8
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12
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Introduction
Supply chain management is based on the process or method of handling the entire
production flow of good and service. Usually, it starts from raw components of all different way
to deliver final product for potential consumers.
Marks & Spencer is one of leading multination retailer in London, UK that specialise in
selling various kind of products such as clothes, home accessories and food materials.
This company was established in 1884 by Michael marks and Thomas Spencer at Leeds.
There are 959 physical stores opened across UK, including 600+ sell food items. The company
was established its reputation in early 20th century with including all essential policies and
procedures. These are supporting to sell various kind of goods and services. In context of M&S
products, it core shop typically feature a selection of clothing, home-ware & beauty ranges.
The important fact about M&S is that when enter into marketplace. It may have made a
plan to achieve as long term business success. The owner of M&S has been consider as
approaches or policies in regards of return an unwanted items and also return money. In this way,
company will try to establish a trust or loyalty among potential consumer so that it help to create
overall business profitability as well as productivity in marketplace. The company has been
expanded the branches in Canada, and at some point, establish a strong position in marketplace.
Despite M&S focus on putting some efforts to improve its brand image. The supply chain was
never able to move beyond its brand reputation.
Customer service and inventory
The product and services of M&S are readily available to its customers as soon as it
receives orders of its customers. This means that the supply chain and inventory management
and controlling methods of M&S is that much efficient that its customers don’t have to wait for
their product to be delivered.
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Inventory method:
There are various types of inventories method. Out of them are:
Safety stock:
It is the method which almost all the companies including M&S generally follows in their
management of inventory. As per this method every company keeps certain inventory to meet
the unforeseen circumstances. This means that some extra quantity of the product will be stored
in the warehouses by the company to meet the out of stock situation (Priniotakis and
Argyropoulos, 2018). This is generally adopted to always ensure the availability of products.
Reorder level (ROL):
Disposing and selling of inventory along with receiving and purchasing of inventory is
one of the common practice. But as per ROL, the point of time will be determined at which the
inventory will be reordered. This means that companies set a specific point, where reordering is
very essential (Inegbedion and et.al., 2019). And when stock of the company will reach this level
then it will implement ROL and reorder the inventory.
Out of these M&S usually adopt safety stock and ROL inventory technique. The reason
behind this adoption is to ensure continuous availability of stock in its warehouses, so that
situation of shortage will never arise and products will be readily available to its customers at all
the time.
Inventory management technique:
Economic order quantity (EOQ):
It is a ideal quantity of stock which is being ordered by the companies so that the stock
level of the companies will be maintained. It is also concerned with cost that this method helps
the companies to minimize the inventory cost in terms of management of ordering cost,
warehousing cost and shortage cost (Susanto, 2018).
Pareto analysis:
It is also one of the best inventory control method by which companies believes that by
focussing over 20% of population 80% of the sales and profit will be generated. This means that
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