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Critical Path Management in the Retail Environment
Background
The retail environment has changed quite significantly over the past 2-3 years. There has been a gradual shift away from the traditional 3-4 ranges per season to a greater rotation of stock possibly every 2-3 weeks. This is recognised as one of the critical success factors of Marks and Spencer’s recent recovery. The pressures on businesses to produce higher quality goods but in less time and at less cost are not getting any easier. Added to this, it is evident that the high street retailers have a greater desire to be more responsive to market trends and forces and therefore cannot commit to large volume orders preferring to place smaller, more frequent purchase orders.
The Challenges
The management and control of the “design to shop” workflow process is constant, complex, involves many people and whilst it can be a lengthy process is also fast moving. In this environment there are many different activities that need to be performed at the right time and usually in a pre-defined sequence to ensure that products are launched on time. This is particularly challenging for any business but with the constant flow of new ranges and products being launched the development process requires a very high level of visibility and control. Having transparency and an early warning of any potential problems will enable staff to work to common priorities and allow them to be more proactive throughout the supply chain process. Added to this, as the plan changes it is essential that the associated critical path activities are re-scheduled quickly and easily in order to ensure that the required action takes place at the right time.
The Solution
Fast React Systems are specialist providers of planning, sourcing and critical path management solutions specifically developed for the apparel, textile and footwear industries. These are fast moving and demanding sectors with reducing lead times and continual pressure on margins. Poor visibility leads to an increase in development time and cost of sourcing. Fast React has a portfolio of solutions that enables businesses to perform fast and effective planning in a highly visual and easy to use format. Effective control of critical path activities is a key factor in ensuring on-time delivery.
Fastreact Critical Path Tracking uses a series of pre-defined templates to co-ordinate and control activities. These templates can be adjusted and modified as required for individual orders offering the flexibility to cope with different scenarios as they arise. Each event is normally assigned to an individual or department therefore pro-active task lists or diaries can be used to keep orders on schedule with overdue events being clearly highlighted.
The critical path planning board is the basis of Fastreact and provides immediate visibility of the status of all activities. Any overdue activities cause an alert to appear on the planning board indicating that one or more of the critical path activities are overdue. The planning board enables the user to drill down to identify these overdue events and for corrective action to be taken. When completed, activities can be updated easily from the planning board.
Where activities are nominated to be the responsibility of another internal person or an external agency such as a supplier, then an email can be generated
automatically using the FR Remote Services Module and sent to the supplier to inform them what is expected and when. This facility also enables regular updates to be provided whether internal or external which are then reflected, upon acceptance, onto the planning board. This mechanism provides a simple but effective method of communication.
Conclusions
Many sourcing businesses overlook the importance of the critical path or pre-production workflow in achieving on time delivery. If this stage of the “design to shop” process is not functioning correctly it will have a knock on effect on the rest of the supply chain resulting in possible delay but more importantly a significant cost of failure throughout the sourcing process. The Fast React solutions have been developed over many years to make sure that they deliver sound business benefits. Yesterday’s tools in today’s sourcing environment will not be sufficient to keep you in control and in business tomorrow.
