SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management

Introduction

Marks & Spencer (M & S) is the largest British manufacturer of clothing, and 43rd in the list of the world's largest retailers. The company owns more than 885 stores, 600 of them - in the UK, and 225 in the remaining 40 countries. Marks & Spencer has always been known as a manufacturer of clothing, but since the 2000s, the company developed and other areas, including: food, household goods, furniture, technology, beauty products, financial services, etc. In the present time, Marks & Spencer stores are full-fledged shopping malls with grocery supermarkets, cafes, entertainment, etc (Towill 2002, 675).

The company has always known as the largest manufacturer of United Kingdom who did not has factories and their suppliers are retailers without shops. Since years, this relationship of Marks and Spencer with its suppliers has become a hallmark of the company's tradition. Marks and Spencer was given low prices, preferential supply, and security of quality, flexibility and capacity. In this paper, we will be focusing on the retailing side of the company.

Mark and Spencer had always has a strong relationship with their suppliers. Their main suppliers have provided them with products in bulky quintets from which they could reduce the cost and increase the profit margins. Most of their suppliers were from the UK in order to reduce lead-time. On the other hand, this long lasting relationship did not help them in staying competitive with other retailers, because they need to be more agile and flexible to compete in clothing industry which is not happening in their case.

Mark and Spencer asked their retailers to move to other countries outside the EU to be able to supply them with lower prices. However, they neglected the total cost of owner ship by doing that because their suppliers would have to invest a lot of money to move there. The company had more than 104 warehouses to store the bulky quantities received from their suppliers, now, they need to reduce the number of warehouses and increase their investment on their logistics and distribution to be more flexible to the market needs (Kumar 2009, 85) (Mentzer 2001, 1).

The question we have to focus on in this paper is if company's supply chain strategy is going in line with their business strategy and marketing?

Supply Chain Understanding

By distribution channel or supply chain means the complex series of exchange or flow of materials and information that is established both within each organisation or company and outside it, with their suppliers and customers. This is to facilitate the flow of products, information flows from one end to another chain, between suppliers and customers. Such exchange of information enables all parties to plan meeting the current and future needs (Simchi-levi 2007, 90).

Managing the supply chain includes the planning and management of all procurement activity, sourcing and conversion, and all activities of logistics management. It also includes, importantly, coordination and collaboration with partners. It can be suppliers, service providers of third party ...