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a greatly improved top line earned through outstanding
supply chain efforts).
QWhat advice would you give someone just starting a career in supply chain management?
AI consistently recommend five points: 1) Build deep talent in at least one supply chain area, but learn
how all the pieces fit. Become a go-to person. 2) Focus on
organizational interfaces (those places where supply chain
people interact with people from other functions or other
companies), and when you work at one of those places,
befriend people on both sides of the organizational line.
3) Rather than offering a verbal opinion, demonstrate the
points you raise wherever possible. 4) Find a mentor. 5)
Embrace change. Whether you love or hate it, it’s the only
constant.
As vice president of supply chain solutions
at Sears Holdings Corp. and president of
Sears Logistics Services Inc., Jeff Starecheski
played an important role in developing his
company’s omnichannel strategy. Currently,
he is responsible for supply chain strategy,
business integration and planning, solutions
marketing, reverse logistics, dot.com fulfillment operations, information technology
solutions, DC and transportation support,
and analytics.
Before stepping into his current role, he held positions
of increasing responsibility within Sears, spending time
in such areas as transportation, inventory planning and
placement, supply chain strategy, and retail operations.
Before joining Sears, Starecheski served for seven years as
an officer in the U.S. Navy. He holds an M.S. in transportation and a B.A. in integrated science from Northwestern
University.
QAt Sears, you’ve been involved in the company’s omnichannel initiatives. What’s the biggest challenge
logistics managers face with omnichannel distribution?
A The biggest challenge is understanding how to engage in the omnichannel conversation with the organization. Traditional elements like order density, time in
transit, and fill rate are still very important but not enough.
Omnichannel retailing has moved the supply chain closer
to the end customer. Logistics managers must now engage
in conversations around the customer experience, which
has inherently different measures of success.
QDoes Sears have DCs that are dedicated to online orders or does it use its retail DCs to handle both store
and online orders?
A Sears leverages dedicated online DCs, retail (store-fac- ing) DCs, and stores to handle online orders. Two years
ago, we had a separation of church and state: Online DCs
fulfilled online orders; retail DCs fulfilled store orders. We
still leverage dedicated online DCs, but inventory in a retail
DC and in designated stores is now available for fulfillment
to a customer based on geography and total fulfillment cost.
QCan you briefly describe what Sears has done in terms of having its retail workers pick and ship online orders?
AStores get credit for the sales they ful- fill. Store associates all understand the
positive impact of fulfilling online orders to
their P&L (profit and loss). In our designated
online stores, dedicated associates are used to
pick, pack, and ship orders. These associates
leverage handheld technology to direct picks,
which can come from the backroom stock
locations or the floor, depending on availability. Handhelds
and terminals are used to stage, pack, and ship product in
support of our “order-by/get-by” promise.
QIn your view, are there any particular pieces of equip- ment or software applications that are essential to
effective omnichannel distribution?
A A flexible and scalable distributed order management platform is critical to effective omnichannel distribution. By the way, it is also one of the most complicated
and difficult solutions to engineer. Integration is critical.
The legacy systems that most retailers employed prior to
omnichannel are tuned to solve a different problem and
will likely be inadequate. The ability to source orders from
the “right” location is fundamental. The ability to modify
your optimization rules on the fly is the next level. It may
be important to source orders from the location that has
the largest inventory pile or the location with the shortest
transit time, the lowest fulfillment cost, or the most capacity. These priorities may change throughout the course of
the year. At Sears, we adjusted these levers to maximize
peak-season performance based on changing priorities.
QWhat advice would you give other logistics managers dealing with omnichannel distribution?
A Start with the customer. When you ask the big “What should I do?” and “Why should I do it?” questions,
start with what is in it for the customer. What experience
are you trying to create for the customer? There are lots
of supply chain reasons for considering omnichannel fulfillment. As an example, shipping from stores can allow a
Jeff Starecheski
