Analysis of Landmark Group's Supply Chain and Logistics Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the Landmark Group's supply chain and logistics management. It begins with an overview of the company, its operations, and its supply chain function. The report then outlines a 10-point plan to ensure the supply chain's significance to the organization's objectives, detailing opportunities, objectives, strategies, and evaluation methods. Furthermore, it discusses three key supply chain management strategies, namely strategic sourcing, lean manufacturing, and inventory management, and how they contribute to achieving the company's goals. The report also evaluates the efficiency of strategies employed by the organization to develop relationships with suppliers, examining strategic sourcing, lean manufacturing, and inventory management in this context. The analysis draws upon academic sources to support the arguments and provide a robust understanding of the subject matter.

Running Head: Management 0
Strategic Supply Chain and Logistics Management
11/27/2018

Management 1
Assignment Task 1:
A) Landmark Group Dubai
Landmark Group is a multinational company based in Dubai, UAE directed by Micky
Jagtiani, who is the chairperson and founder of the organization. The group is involved in the
retailing of footwear, cosmetics, apparel, consumer electronics, baby products, home
improvement, and beauty products. The organization also has interests in healthcare, mall
management and, various in-house brands and operates with other brands, acting as a retailer.
It mainly concentrates on the MENA region, which has a large presence in India and other
countries involving Pakistan, Turkey, Tanzania, Kenya, Sri Lanka, India, Kuwait, Oman,
Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Nigeria, Zambia, Malaysia, and Thailand. It is established in
1973 with a single store in Bahrain, has productively grown into one of the biggest and
leading hospitality and retail corporations in Middle East, Africa, and the Indian
subcontinent, with a substantial global footprint. It constantly strives to offer excellent value,
which has over 55,000 employees, currently operates over 2300 outlets with 57 brands and
retail presence of over 30 million sq. ft. across 22 countries (Deepa and Chitramani, 2013)
The role of the supply chain function is that the quantity intake plan is balanced to meet
business constraints at a nominal level and safeguards that it can maintain a good intake
balance, which can be executed as per the overall merchandise lifecycle strategy and plan. It
will create an intake plan at a nominal level and work backward from in-store launch date to
the vendor manufacturing date and issue key milestones dates for every possible option. They
will provide significant information in the operation planning to meet the expectation of the
consumer. It provides a good understanding and knowledge of vendor production facilities,
able to deliver as per time and plan ((Zamberi Ahmad and Ahmad, 2016).
b) Determine a 10-point plan, which will make sure that supply chain function remains
significant to the organization objectives.
Ans. 10-point plan
 Background-The organization has also diversified its business operations into
wellness, leisure, hotels segment with Landmark leisure i.e. chain of confectionary
stores for teens and children, and indoor entertainment centers working with
Candelite, Fun City, Fun Works, and Fun Ville. It also operates Foodmark, which

Management 2
involves franchise & home-grown brand such as Zafran, and joint venture brands
such as Max Burgers, Bazerkhan, Ushna, Carluccio’s, Max’s, The Meat
Company, La Gaufrette, Tribes, and Nando’s. They also operate with Fitness and
wellness centers, Balance Salon and Spa, comfortable budget hotels, relaxation,
and grooming centers (Singh, 2011).
 Opportunity-Their main opportunity is to enhance their success, which lies in
efficient operations, efficient business strategy, talented people, and concentrate
on logistics and operation management. They always seek to pursue new talent to
encourage our team and seek professionals who are excited to do their life best
work.
 Objectives- Their main objective is continuing to deliver exceptional value,
constant innovation, and outstanding customer experience. Their stores boast an
impressive and expressive range of home center, fashion, baby care products with
leading international brands. They provide an innovative, friendly, fun, fast-paced,
and inspiring environment to nurture the talent and continuously refining skillsets
and strategies (Chowhan, 2013).
 Targets-Landmark Group is close to hitting the targets its $1 million revenue
target, where it operates Lifestyle brands, Max Fashions, Home Centre, and other
brands to a maximum extent. They target 30 to 35 percent growth after
collaboration with French supermarket operator and earned $600 million in India
(Dani, 2014).
 Message- Their main vision is to maintain a sense of leadership by dynamic,
visionary, and hands-on leadership guides in every step on the way. They have
communicated the message of always look ahead and develop today to achieve
tomorrow (Baskaran, 2012).
 Strategy-It is believed that they can strategies themselves in moving more and
more towards fulfilling their lifestyle needs and becoming health-conscious
products, which are beneficial to the customers. They have set an example of the
yesterday acquisition, which is an aggressive growth strategy. They are planning a
$150 million expansion across the region starting with 150 new stores this year
(Trebbin, 2014).
 Channels- They have cones up with an online marketplace, which aims to promote
its channel strategy in the country wherein a customer can shop online from
offline stores. They have currently launched its E-Commerce website i.e.

Management 3
LandmarkShops.in to make available to the customer. It is stated that recently the
organization has retail chains involving Max Retail and Lifestyle in the country
(Lee and Jain, 2009).
 Timetable-They should maintain an exceptional value to the customers, which is
the cornerstone of the company values. They should first generate effort steer
towards continued delivery of the promise to our customers through our products
and exceptional service. Then they become capable, diligent, and active in
managing the leadership team to understand its role in executing severe risk
metrics, financial discipline, and corporate governance (Mitra and Thorpe, 2011).
 Budget-It is stated that by allocating budget in a sufficient manner to plans to
launch new hotel brands and more mid-market hotels in the near future. The
budgets which are planned to result in cost reduction (Notteboom and Rodrigue,
2012)
 Evaluation- Now, these strategies are evaluated to make a lead towards
international expansion and growth in the hospitality sector. It simply generates a
brand that caters to the market (Thorpe and Mitra, 2012).
c) Discuss 3 supply chain management strategies that assist in attaining its goals.
Ans. Supply chain management strategies that help the management in attaining its goals
are-
 Strategic Sourcing- It helps the management to define the way data and
information are collected and utilized so that an organization can influence its
purchasing power to find the potential values in the marketplace. It cannot
maintain the importance of operating in a cooperative manner. Their main concept
is to develop and maintain channels of supply at the best lowest total cost,
including the lowest purchase price. It focuses upon traditional purchasing
activities to include all the doings within the procurement cycle, from the
requirement to receipt and payment of goods and services. However, the strategic
sourcing primarily concentrates on decreasing costs, with maintaining a long-term
relationship with key suppliers to attain a competitive advantage. It is significant
that both supplier and buyer collaborate and share data and information to
recognize opportunities that will progressively enhance savings indefinitely. Its
overall objective is to support the ultimate goal of attaining and sustaining an
organization’s competitive advantage and bring success. The key concern of

Management 4
executives is to manage the cost of purchased goods and services (Wang et al.,
2016).
 Lean Manufacturing-Lean supply chain management is not for those organizations
who manufacture goods but by companies who streamline their products and
methods to eliminate waste and hazardous activities. The companies have a
number of areas in their supply chain activities where waste can be recognized as
costs, time, and inventory. They are looking to prospect better technologies to
help them in improving procurement processes and business operations. This
strategy gained popularity in the manufacturing part where there is a possibility of
significant improvement, which reduces waste and maximum resources to
maintain operational performance. Having zero defects in the manufacturing
process, increase efficiency and reduce waste in the businesses as a whole.
Landmark Group Dubai should adopt lean supply strategies to examine bill of
materials, equipment, and routings to recognize where improvements can be
attained. It also businesses to evaluate every method and process in their supply
chain activities and recognize areas that are utilized excessive resources and
information, which can be measured in dollars. It will enhance the company’s
overall profitability and competitiveness (Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes,
2014).
 Inventory Management-It is important to maintain a relationship with supplier and
customer to develop a good understanding and integrate inventory system. It is an
important aspect of efficiently maintaining supply chains. In many cases, this
cooperative relationship management has been considered as the principle of
supply chain management. It is the most difficult and important role, which plays
in the supply chain to maintain the balance of demand and supply. It is to be
efficiently managing the flow in the supply chain, as a company has to deal with
upstream supplier exchanges and downstream customer demands. Inventory
management strategy is very important to balance the equilibrium of achieving the
demands of the customers, as it is often very hard to predict accuracy, precision,
and maintain the sufficient supply of goods and materials. It can be attained using
strategic information sharing for better inventory management. They used point-
of-sale data in the retail industry for inventory management and business
operations. This help inventories decisions to be used effectively and efficiently

Management 5
when supply inflows are required to handle demand outflows (Brandenburg et al.,
2014).
Assignment Task-2
a) Evaluate the efficiency of strategies used by the organization to develop a relationship
with suppliers.
Ans. It is believed by the majority of an organization that their real assets are surrounded
in the relationship quality shared between the company and their stakeholders such as
employees, suppliers, customers, and clients. Managing and developing a relationship
with suppliers is the most important criteria to bring success and growth in the
organization.
 Strategic Sourcing-It is the ongoing method of finding the best suppliers and
utilizes the relationship of suppliers to maximize the objective of an organization.
It satisfies the needs of the business from markets via the planned and proactive
analysis of supply markets and the identification of suppliers with the objective of
offering solutions to meet agreed and pre-determined needs. It helps us to reduce
the total and marginal costs of acquisition while developing service and quality. It
helps in maintaining procurement costs through efficient delivering and
maintenance of demonstration in various corporations. It is seen that if these
strategies are aligned specifically then success and growth can be achieved. It
broadens the list of participating vendors and improves return on investment to
maintain a stable and productive relationship (Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke,
2015).
 Lean Manufacturing-It has believed that lean manufacturing is the most effective
strategy used by the organization, which speeds up the production and distribution
by the removal of waste and harmful toxics from the operations and simplify the
methods. They use “Just in Time” as a next method to eliminate the waste from
the system. It leads the path towards to make the things in small quantities i.e.
large inventories, high capital, high-speed machinery, huge setup expenses, high
lead times and defects costs. It also encouraged cooperating as a team and
handling many specialized tasks. They provide training of handling such minor
equipment repairs and housekeeping to understand the functioning. This strategy
is very helpful in the quality of work accomplished at each stage to coordinate

Management 6
with the supplier. The company should treat the suppliers as their partners and are
trained at each point to decrease the stocks, setup times, and breakdowns. They
should maximize the availability of maintaining supplier relationship with
suppliers and uses JIT process to handle operations. It helps to innovate in
sustaining and gaining competitive advantage (Roh, Hong and Min, 2014).
 Inventory Management-It has been stated that the emergence of Information
Technology has taken business its place and brought new solutions with new
opportunities and challenges. Inventory Management is a major concern, which
maintains the correct staff level and carries department meetings to solve the
means and problems with the inventory control framework. It maintains the
settings to decrease depth of the inventory, probability of excess stock, build
develop width of inventory, and obsolescence. It is seen that managing inventory
is an important part of well-organized and successful business organization. It
helps in managing and controlling inventory in a very effective and efficient
manner. It helps the organization to keep a track on its customers, item movement,
and suppliers between different branches. It also provides the business with asset
management methods to enhance company productivity and warehouse. If it is
managed properly, then it is possible that it will probably eliminate the technical
errors of an inventory control system. It will also save effort, time, and deliver
accurate reports to the employees (Qrunfleh and Tarafdar, 2014).
b) Evaluate the Information Technology utilized by the organization to develop
strategies in maintaining a relationship with suppliers.
Ans. It is believed that maintaining and building a relationship with suppliers is
significant for the long-term purpose. The organization needs to retain and build a
relationship with suppliers to achieve competitive advantage and continuous
improvement. The information technology plays an importantrole in maintaining the
relationship with partners as supplier enablement is the channel that uses to incorporate
with their trade partners and e-procurement activities. The NewG is utilized by landmark
Group Dubai to build a strong relationship. The web-based applications utilized by the
company i.e. software from both i2 technology and Microsoft, which has immensely
assisted to maintain a supply chain structure that is practical, cost-effective, and potential
for future growth and success. The implementation of the i2 supply chain software has
allowed linking with the suppliers in real time after restricting any delay and has

Management 7
permitted to estimate the correct amount of raw material and resources required at
manufacturing locations of Landmark Group Dubai. The i2 supply chain application was
set up for the objective of planning, execution, and implementation of products and
services (Govindan, et al., 2015).
The i2 software helped the planning stage by collecting and gathering of needed raw
material and resources from the suppliers and Landmark Group Dubai. After that, the
execution stage needed Landmark Group Dubai to have the correct amount of
components in order to meet the needs of the customers. Then, the implementation part of
the products and services will maintain the synchronization of the available material.
However, these steps assist to generate a more effective and efficient supply chain. It is
believed that the i2 technology has helped the planning process because it has allowed the
option of having suppliers associated with the supply chain system of Landmark Group
Dubai through the web. This web-connected access is a protected extranet portal that acts
association for suppliers (Schnackenberg and Tomlinson, 2016).
The benefits can be gained as that the suppliers are provided the chance to view their
material at Landmark Group Dubai, involving cost reports, engineering alterations,
performance, demand/supply forecasting, and product quality. Therefore, it is believed
that web-based applications i.e. i2 technologies could be benefited to the NewG in order
to maintain the relationship with suppliers and enhance the productivity of the Landmark
Group Dubai. Supply chain management is termed as the science of incorporating the
flow of information and goods from primary sourcing through delivery to the end user.
There are the primary activities, which help to the end-to-end process, which involves
production planning, inventory management, purchasing of raw material, order
processing and fulfillment, improving customer service, transportation, and distribution of
final product to the end-user (Trainor et al., 2014). It is stated that the management of the
flow of information and goods have always been a primary factor of supply chain
management. The steady growth of web-based information and information technology
transfer between their customers, companies, and their suppliers and has progressively
enhanced the significance of information management in maintaining an effective and
efficient supply chain. This is changing many methods and procedures within the supply
chain from production and procurement to product design and customer management.
The information technology maintains a relationship with a supplier in many ways-

Management 8
 They can use E-Commerce to conduct business operations on a paperless
environment and make use of Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) and Electronic
Data Interchange (EDI), which allow Landmark Group Dubai to move the data
and information digitally between customers and suppliers.
 They can use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which helps in exchanging of
business documents in a prescribed format electronically. It is the practice of
communicating freely the information between two organizations digitally
rather than using the traditional form of courier, mail, and fax. It helps in
processing the information very speedily and provides effective and efficient
customer service. It helps in transferring the information more electrically to
reduce paperwork and enhance productivity. It helps in maintaining a
relationship with suppliers as it is cost effective and secures a competitive
advantage for the Landmark Group Dubai.
 They use Bar Coding and scanner, which are most evident in checkout counter
of the supermarket. It maintains the other applications and software that track
the moving items such as automobiles in assembly operations, manufacturing,
and product placement.
 They use Data Warehouse, which is a consolidated database to be maintained
separately from a Landmark Group Dubai production framework database. It
is organized around information on business operations rather than specific
business processes.
 They use Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), which is central to their IT
infrastructure. ERP framework has become popular during a few decades,
which reduce the manual activities, capture the data, and task-related to
processing inventory management, financial, and customer service
information. It achieves a high degree of integration of by using a single data
entry, and maintains a common understanding of shared data and established a
set of rules for processing data (Gunasekaran et al., 2015).
It is stated that Landmark Group Dubai can use the information technologies to improve the
effectiveness and efficiency of the value chain activities. It is a powerful and controlling tool
for better supply chain management and developing the relationship with suppliers. It deals
with internal operations i.e. production schedules and production quantities and Just in Time

Management 9
inventory management to buy more orders, a shift in demand, and accurate management of
consumer preferences (Navimipour and Soltani, 2016).
Assignment Task-3
Landmark Group Dubai is the first retailer that experimented store-level point-of-sale
systems, central database, and satellite network. They decided to eliminate the forces and
move directly to suppliers and procure needed things. They have always negotiated with
manufacturers, make an estimation of purchasing, and identify the cost structure. When
merging with the use of barcodes, employees are capable of analyzing and acquire real-time
store information. In respect to Landmark Group Dubai’s distribution, its distribution centers
are located in various areas and the organization divided each distribution centers into
different parts according to the quality of products. The organization generally needs a
frequency of a high percentage of products and inventory turnover in distribution centers
before directly transporting to stores (Heckmann, Comes and Nickel, 2015).
(Hesping and Schiele, 2015)
 Market review-In this Landmark Group Dubai needs to analyze the market as
opportunities is generally triggered by a business requirement for a product or service.
It might involve the components, equipment, raw material, resources needed for the

Management 10
complete finished product. It also embraces the service requirements, which involves
the transportation carriers, computer programmers, maintenance service providers,
and hazardous waste handlers. They need to analyze the situational undertaking,
which involves purchase requisitions, which involves estimated time cost, date of
requisition, description of required material or service, the quantity of material. It is
specified that the marketing department should purchase an advertising campaign.
The research and department require a clinical trial and human resource department
should print a brochure. This market review will tell us the complete understanding of
the prospective market and dealing with the aim and objectives of the customers
(Carbonara and Pellegrino, 2017).
 Review of the supplier’s capabilities- The Landmark Group Dubai should understand
the capabilities of the suppliers. Procurement must collaborate with the suppliers and
its internal consumers to evaluate the method and procedures to understand where
opportunities exist to remove waste and enhance value delivery. It is utilized for non-
routine supply items of extreme value. They maintain the good record of
accomplishment of existing suppliers, which should not be ruled out. They plan and
control system that schedule, release, and control the flow of work in an organization.
It can have a major effect on the performance of the supply chain. They should
maintain a Performa to accomplish the suppliers’ capabilities and motivate them in
order to achieve success (Paras, Pal and Ekwall, 2018).
 Link with supply chain- They has to make a bond and attractive international
suppliers, maintaining a good relationship with suppliers and sourcing new products.
They should maintain a link with the suppliers to develop a close understanding and
ensure the quality of the product offered by suppliers. They are more aware of
customer taste, national trends, and local needs. This helps in creating links with the
population as well. They should interact with the suppliers at a given point of time
and enhance efficiency over time for further optimization in accumulating experience
and minimizes the cost over time. They should coordinate the channel by periodic
inventory and closely watch upon the pricing, channel of integration, and promotion,
which is a key area to work. It is predicted that if the company has a good relationship
with their suppliers, they can achieve success and growth in the future. They can
achieve by maintaining an association with their suppliers and earn higher profits with
respect to the customer relationship (Ahi and Searcy, 2015).

Management 11
 Order to suppliers- Then they give orders to suppliers as the need to decide the
amount of quantity, quality of the product, and technologies required to assess the
integrated supply chain management of the company. The applications of information
technology as RFID make the process of ordering very smooth. By utilizing these
technologies, customers and employees can easily attain real-time information about
all merchandise warehoused in distribution centers. When the supply of products is
ordered in a definite time and purpose then only it can be produced, manufactured,
and finally delivered to the customers (Aguezzoul, 2014).
 Procurement of products- The, procurement of products is to be identified as
acquiring and purchasing the appropriate goods and services at the best potential cost
to meet the needs and expectations of the consumer. It delivers a wide range of
advantages of supporting the strategic organizational objectives. It includes lower cost
of production, increased efficiency, and enhanced quality of products, risk reduction,
greater benefit, and innovation. It also generates a higher-profit margin and popularity
over other competitors through monitoring the receipt, approval, and review of the
flow of items into the organization through the suppliers. They should take a proper
feedback and assess time to time in managing the procurement and distribution of the
product. It is believed that attainment and implementation of possible results could be
achieved only when supply can be achieved (Rezaei et al., 2016).
 Transportation-After all this, they should focus on transporting all the products in
their units to deliver to their customer in a large amount. It has been seen that
intermodal transportation shows a remarkable growth. It presents an attempt to the
development and growth of an analytical framework for transporting the finished
products irrespective of hazardous materials. They should plan, manage, and maintain
intermodal shipments to delivering the finished products at the stipulated time to the
customers. They should convey the assigned load units to the utilization of anticipated
quality product, and transportation cost will be minimized to set the operations and
cost of the management (Kozlenkova et al., 2015).
 Environmental Compliance- They need to concentrate on environmental regulation is
a big part of today’s scenario. It is to be taken care of delivering products to
customers irrespective of producing hazardous free products. It is the responsibility of
the suppliers to maintain an environmentally friendly environment. The suppliers’
ability to comply with the regulations is an important concern for supply chain
management. They should adopt methods and processes to make the strategy of