May 10, 2017 Industry news
Steve Richards, retail engagement manager for GS1 UK, looks at the retail supply chain and asks if the UK grocery sector is wasting money due to inefficiencies that can easily be fixed? – if everyone works together.
The Perfect Order programme began over a year ago as a collaboration between leading retailers and suppliers, facilitated by GS1 UK, to harmonise inbound delivery requirements for the UK retail grocery sector. It set out with the goal to improve efficiency and remove the significant avoidable costs that exist in the supply chain – in order to deliver real financial and efficiency benefits for suppliers and retailers, and of course, ultimately for the shopper too.
The industry working group was initially driven by poor compliance to inbound receipting requirements, the customisation of individual retailer orders by suppliers, and poor adoption and implementation of the global GS1 supply chain standards. Every retailer had their own way of managing the entire order-to-cash process, much to the frustration – and cost – of their suppliers. As independent advisors, we were asked to visit many retailer and supplier distribution centres and pretty soon we confirmed these findings – and much more besides.
So what has been done in the last year? And what more needs to be done?
Read the whole interview hereRelated
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