To illustrate the value of giving the
supply chain people a seat at the table,
you need look no further than the legendary, but true, tale of the well-known catalog merchant and the flag
poles. The merchant had found a deal
on flag poles—brilliant merchandising in the wake of 9/11, but not with-
out some logistical challenges.
Unfortu-nately, the company stumbled in the execution. Not only were
putaway and storage found to be
impossible when the poles arrived, but
they were also too long to be carried
cross-wise down aisles by forklifts. The
mer-chant eventually solved the prob-
Kai;zen
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lem by shipping them back to the supplier
for conversion to a drop-ship prod-uct—a
costly solution that would have been avoided if it had gotten the logistics and material
handling people involved early on.
Hold out for that seat
The potential pitfalls notwithstanding, the
march of SKU proliferation isn’t going to
slow down, let alone stop. How can you
deal with it? Get a seat at the planning
table; get in the loop on new products, on
corporate strategies, on catalog content.
The cost and service consequences of not
being there ought to be clear enough by
now. How many products that are too long
or too wide or too heavy to be stored, or
picked, or conveyed effectively is it going to
take to hammer that message home?
Look, the buyers are going to continue
to make mistakes, some of the merchandisers’ gambles aren’t going to pay off, and
a lot of your peers aren’t going to fully
appreciate that the supply chain can’t
operate either in the dark or on auto pilot.
But someone else will be evaluating the
players’ performance in those other areas
of the company. Our worry isn’t whether
they’re doing a good job or a bad one; it’s
how we can get enough insight into the
supply chain ramifications of their
actions and decisions to make the right
decisions in our world.
In the meantime, there are channels to
conquer, competitors to vanquish, catalogs to fill with stuff that sizzles, stores to
energize with stuff that’s even hotter, and
consumers—who actually seem to like
things like peanut butter and jelly in the
same jar, or lime-flavored cigarettes, or
detergent in buckets too heavy to lift, for
example—to both entice and satisfy. It all
adds up to SKU proliferation. So, buckle
up, supply chain professionals; the seat at
the table is yours to claim. ;
Editor’s note: For some practical ideas
on how to deal with SKU proliferation, visit
www.dcvelocity.com/200909basictraining.
Art Van Bodegraven, president of Van Bodegraven
Associates, may be reached at (614) 336-0346 or
avan@columbus.rr.com. Kenneth B. Ackerman, president of
The Ackerman Company, can be reached at (614) 488-3165
or ken@warehousing-forum.com.
