University Report: Supply Chain Management Issues at Woolworths

This report analyzes the supply chain management of Woolworths, a prominent Australian supermarket chain. It begins with an introduction outlining Woolworths' strengths, such as brand recognition and fresh produce, alongside weaknesses like competition and online service limitations. The report identifies operational issues, including delays in inbound and outbound logistics. A literature review explores common supply chain challenges like risks, volatility, and CSR issues. The research methodology section details the use of secondary data from literature and primary data from employee surveys to identify and understand supply chain problems. The report provides a comprehensive overview of Woolworths' supply chain, its issues, and the methodologies used to address them.

Running head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Supply Chain Management
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
1. Introduction
Woolworths is one of the most famous supermarket and grocery chains in Australia. The
company specialises in selling fresh groceries and fruits to the people all over the world. The
company is a part of the Woolworths Limited. Headquartered in Australia, the company is one of
the key market players in the market of Australia (Fernie and Sparks 2014). The company
ensures supply of fresh raw materials, to be sold to the customers. The strengths of Woolworths
are as follows:
i. Woolworths is one of the pioneers to introduce the retail market concept
ii. The brand image of Woolworths attracts thousands of customers
iii. Fresh fruits and vegetables available to the customers
iv. Reliability of the products of Woolworths is high (Fernie and Sparks 2014)
v. The customer relation with the customers is positive, thus ensuring customer loyalty
However, Woolworths have certain weaknesses as well. The weaknesses are as follows:
i. The brand faces high competition from competitors such as Coles, Aldi and Tesco
ii. The online customer services of Woolworths is poor, and thus the satisfaction of the online
customers are not high
iii. Various other companies have stronger online presence
iv. The logistics and the supply chain management of Woolworths is not effective enough
v. The logistics supply includes delay and mismanagement (Fernie and Sparks 2014)

2SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
The logistic goals of Woolworths include ensuring the timely supply of the raw materials
such that the timely delivery of the products could be ensured. However, the operations issues
include unwanted delay of the supply chain, disruption of the supply chain, late in the arrival of
the inbound and outbound logistics . The delay in the inbound logistics or operations imposes a
major issue on the company’s supply chain.
2. Literature review
The supply chain management has a key role to play in Woolworths such that the
customers of the company could be delivered with the products on time. The issues with the
supply chain are common in various business organizations. Some of the commonly occurring
supply chain and logistic issues are described.
i. One of the major issues that are faced by the business organizations includes various unknown
risks and volatility. The longer the supply chain of a company, the more it is exposed and the
greater risk it faces (Lawley et al. 2016). With long supply chains, the delay in any one of the
component results in recurrence of the delay, thus magnifying the over delay in the supply chain
(Monczka et al. 2015). In order to mitigate this issue, the management of the supply chain has to
be done efficiently, along with ensuring that the various possible causes of delay are identified
and mitigated (Stadtler 2015).
ii. A major variability in the supply chain is also a major cause of the supply chain management
issues. The differences between the actual process and the expected process of the supply chain
management should not vary widely (Lu and Swaminathan 2015). Thus, it is important that the
gap is mitigated, ensuring effective supply chain management. Lack of effective supply chain

3SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
management, causes delay in the entire production cycle (Mangan and Lalwani 2016). Hence, it
is important that the supply chain management activities are undertaken diligently.
iii. Along with the effective supply chain management, the CSR issues need to be given
importance as well. The CSR issues include lack of effective waste management and lack of
considerable conservation of the energy (Lawley et al. 2016). These issues also results in the
disruption of the supply chain management of the various companies. Thus, it is important that
the supply chain and logistic managements are dealt with importance.
3. Research methodology
The research methodologies that could be adopted, in order to deal with the supply chain
management issues, include the collection of data from various companies, such that the
common issues could be identified. For the collection of secondary data, various literature have
been reviewed and the commonly occurring issues in the supply chain management and logistics
have been identified (Stadtler 2015). Moreover, primary data is collected by conducting survey
of the employees of various companies, who have been facing supply chain management issues.
The collection of the primary and secondary data is important for understanding the logistics and
supply chain management issues that are faced by various business organizations. The issues are
highlighted, and the initiatives taken by the various companies, in order to resolve the supply
chain management issues are also studied. Thus, the research methodology has been chosen
appropriately for primary and secondary data collection.

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References
Fernie, J. and Sparks, L., 2014. Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and new
challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan page publishers.
Lawley, M., Birch, D. and Craig, J., 2016. 20 Managing sustainability in the seafood supply
chain. A Stakeholder Approach to Managing Food: Local, National, and Global Issues, 4, p.284.
Lu, L.X. and Swaminathan, J.M., 2015. Supply chain management.
Mangan, J. and Lalwani, C., 2016. Global logistics and supply chain management. John Wiley &
Sons.
Monczka, R.M., Handfield, R.B., Giunipero, L.C. and Patterson, J.L., 2015. Purchasing and
supply chain management. Cengage Learning.
Stadtler, H., 2015. Supply chain management: An overview. In Supply chain management and
advanced planning (pp. 3-28). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.’