April 28, 2015 Industry news
With the support of key industry players - Tesco, ASDA, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, Mondelez, Unilever and Dairy Crest – GS1 UK launched the Quality Assurance Retail Advisory Board to offer the retail industry a quality assurance framework to improve retail today, and set the foundations for the future.
Today’s challenge for industry is to improve the overall shopping experience in a cost-effective way, whether the customer chooses to purchase, in-store or online. The purpose of the Board is to address the challenges and opportunities in this omnichannel environment and enable the transition to it by building certainty and confidence in product availability and information to consumers.
Initially, the Board has agreed to focus efforts on two key projects:
- Industry standard for green lane receiving (Perfect Order)
Seeking to achieve maximum process harmonisation across inbound deliveries by building a solid Inbound Delivery standard in collaboration with Retailers and Suppliers. This will result in cost reductions, improved accuracy and product availability. But most importantly, the project will deliver a quality assurance scheme for the industry to drive trust and confidence in the end-to-end supply chain processes.
To set the foundation for the future in multi-channel we need to get the basics right. Better compliance to inbound delivery standards is essential to drive greater collaboration and joint business efficiencies to ultimately satisfy our customers”
Simon Mardle, Supply Chain Transformation Programme Manager, Tesco
- B2C Product Information
The second project aims to develop a minimum standard for change communication between trading partners, focused on the generation of Business-to-Consumer (B2C) information and the flow of this data through to retailer channels.
In the next few months, the Quality Assurance Retail Advisory Board will meet to commit and agree on the resources for implementation, a governance structure and an industry roadmap and related execution plan for the two projects.
The demands for supply chain efficiency, quality data and regulatory compliance have never been higher. We are here to help our members develop industry programmes that will deliver sustainable benefits to all players involved: manufacturers, retailers, third parties and, of course, consumers”
Harshal Gore, Quality Assurance Services Director, GS1 UK.
We will keep our members informed about the progress and main outcomes of this industry initiative.