Lean retailing e as implicações a montante

Continuado daqui:
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"To make a sale, a retailer must have "on its wagon" the product the customer wants. Absence of an item often translates into a lost sale and reduced revenues and profits. The magnitude of such lost sales for retailers can be significant. For example, in 1994, roughly 25 percent of customers who entered a Macy's store left without making a purchase because the product they were seeking was not available. On the other hand, the retail "wagon" should not be too full, since stocking retail shelves with unpopular items also results in excess costs—the cost of capital tied up in unwanted goods, the opportunity cost of the space that could be used for products that customers would buy if present, and, ultimately, lost margin when retailers must resort to price markdowns or product disposal to clear languishing items from their shelves.
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The main goal of retail inventory strategy is to maximize profitability by managing the inherent tension between stocking too much and stocking too little.
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But as product variety has increased and product life cycles have shortened, this tension has become increasingly acute, prompting inventory management practices to evolve in recent years to meet rapidly changing market demands."
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"Conceptually, retail inventory management is straightforward enough: Forecast demand for a product; order the product in the appropriate quantity; stock it in the right retail locations; keep track of its sales and the resulting inventory levels; and replenish its store inventories if possible (either from the manufacturer if it offers replenishment services for that product or from the retailer's central warehouse if the retailer had purchased a large quantity of the product in advance of the selling season). In practice, however, retail inventory management is fraught with challenges, such as long and uncertain order-fulfillment lead times, and errors in product identification and record keeping."
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O livro segue com várias abordagens sobre a produção de previsões, com os vários riscos de se fazerem previsões com base em modelos, ou seja, simplificações da realidade.
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"The forecasting challenges retailers confront have been amplified in recent years by product proliferation in almost every category. As a result, demand forecast uncertainty has grown substantially, thereby increasing the level of inventory that must be held to meet customer service requirements. High demand uncertainty, previously associated only with fashion products, is now pervasive, characterizing even those items once regarded as basics—such as power tools, industrial seals, men's dress shirts, and blue jeans.
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product variety is costly due to the increased demand uncertainty associated with each unit. Retailers thus must either limit product variety or change their way of doing business so as to minimize the impact of high variety. Lean retailing is the major such change that retailers are adopting to reduce significantly the costs associated with product variety."
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Assim, os autores encaminham-se para uma nova forma de trabalhar:
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"The new world of rapid replenishment implies additional capabilities for both the retailer and manufacturer. The retailer must be able to gather and synthesize point-of-sales data quickly to determine what has sold and then update its demand forecast for the product accordingly.
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The manufacturer must deliver the ordered product quickly to the retailer. As we describe in Chapter 7, manufacturers have essentially two choices in supplying replenishables. They can hold finished products in inventory, thereby reducing their processing requirements during the replenishment lead time to picking, packing, and shipping the order. However, this approach increases the risk to the manufacturer: It has to commit to holding finished goods of a product for which it has little or no consumer demand information.
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The alternative is to adopt quick-response manufacturing strategies that allow items to be produced to order. But given the increasingly short lead times dictated by retailers (often just a couple of days), most manufacturers cannot produce in this way. Therefore, it is not surprising that most replenishment products are basics or fashion-basics with relatively stable demand: Manufacturers are unwilling to hold speculative stock to meet replenishment requests from retailers for fashion products because the risk of holding those fashion goods in finished goods inventory is too high.
Ironically, replenishment capabilities would be of most value to the retailer for fashion products, but because of their short product lives and the unpredictability of demand, fashion products are typically not offered on a replenishment basis. From the apparel supplier's perspective, that's a good thing—at least for the time being."
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Esta é uma das razões para o regresso dos clientes no têxtil.
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Continua.
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Trechos retirados de "A stitch in time : lean retailing and the transformation of manufacturing—lessons from the apparel and textile industries"

Lean retailing

No livro de Suzanne Berger encontrei a referência um livro escrito em 1999 "A Stitch in Time".
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Ontem li alguns capítulos e fiquei a matutar como tudo se encaixa para explicar o regresso dos clientes que testaram a Ásia e agora voltam a comprar à indústria portuguesa:
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"Merchandising is fundamental to retailing. Though perhaps less obvious, logistics is just as essential an ingredient for success. If you can't get the merchandise on the shelves, you can't sell it. And if you don't have the right merchandise on the shelves, you'll lose that sale to a competitor that does. What goes on behind the scenes is of great importance: efficient warehousing, transportation, and delivery systems are among the elements of successful merchandising.

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Lean retailers transform the basis of competition for all suppliers by radically reducing the amount of time manufacturers have to respond to orders. That means suppliers must be able to provide frequent deliveries, in smaller quantities, of more diverse products. Moreover, they must do so with a far greater level of accuracy in fulfilling orders and meeting delivery standards than in the past. In short, the retail revolution alters the basic rules of both domestic and global competition for the apparel and textile industries

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With the advent of lean retailing, replenishing products within a selling season is the most fundamental challenge for apparel manufacturers.

Instead of specifying that manufacturers respond to a single, fixed order placed far in advance of required delivery time, lean retailers may now require that a replenishment order be filled in as little as three days.

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For all retail categories, the percentage of total dollar volumes shipped on a daily or weekly basis quadrupled—from 8.7 percent in 1988 to 33.9 percent in 1992. At the same time, the percentage of nonreplenished goods plummeted, from 61.7 percent in 1988 down to 22.5 percent in 1992."

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Continua.

Recordar Lawrence... nada está escrito (parte XI)

Continuado da parte X, parte IX e sobretudo da parte VIII.

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O que podemos aprender e utilizar no caso do nosso país?

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Segundo o BCG, para os EUA:

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"Seven “tipping point” sectors are poised to return to the U.S. for manufacturing: transportation goods, computers and electronics, fabricated metal products, machinery, plastics and rubber, appliances and electrical equipment, and furniture. Combined with increased U.S. exports, these industry groups could boost annual output in the economy by $100 billion, create 2 to 3 million jobs, and lower the U.S. non-oil merchandise trade deficit by up to 35 percent beginning in the next five years."

Recordar Lawrence... nada está escrito (parte X)

Continuado da parte IX e sobretudo da parte VIII.
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Há anos que escrevemos aqui no blogue sobre a possibilidade do regresso dos importadores que compravam na China a países mais próximos, mais flexíveis e mais baratos porque não obrigam a tanto impacte de capital por "demasiado" tempo.

• "O regresso dos clientes"
• "Payback time"
• "Hipotéticos futuros..."
• "Ainda podia ser melhor"

Interessante este relatório de Agosto de 2011 do BCG "Made in America, Again - Why Manufacturing Will Return to the U.S.":

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"A big shift of manufacturing from China to the U.S. and other parts of North America will create up to 3 million U.S. jobs in coming years, says a study from Boston Consulting Group.
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The report says labor costs in China are rising so fast, while U.S. productivity continues to climb, that the cost advantage of sourcing many types of goods production in China is rapidly shrinking.
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“Factor in shipping, inventory costs and other considerations,” and for many types of goods “the cost gap between sourcing in China and manufacturing in the U.S. will be minimal,” according to the report.
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But the report said ocean shipping rates have risen in recent years, mainly because of spiking bunker fuel prices since the depths of the recession in 2009, while a shortage of container port capacity projected in 2015 and a falloff in shipbuilding could push rates higher.
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The authors said the steady appreciation of China’s currency against the U.S. dollar is another factor raising the cost of goods made there, while trade disputes continue over many products made in China and the ocean supply chain is subject to threat of disruptions.
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BCG said several southern U.S. states “will turn out to be among the least expensive production sites in the industrialized world.” Mexico is also getting some of the output shifting from China, and can deliver goods into the U.S. in one or two days compared with 21 by ocean. But BCG officials said Mexico would not benefit as much as some expect because U.S. expertise in many goods would draw the work back here instead."
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E Portugal? Acredito que o país vai aproveitar esta volta da maré, como base para fornecer a Europa Ocidental.
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Aproveitar também para ler "Buck Up, America: China Is Getting Too Expensive"

Backshoring... I told you so!!!

Já o escrevi neste blogue esta semana e, hoje volto a repeti-lo.

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Estou optimista!!!

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Não falo do orçamento e dessas coisas que interessam muito a quem vive ligado ao Estado, isso a mim só me preocupa por causa do saque que os normandos inventam e fazem.

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Falo da economia de bens transaccionáveis, falo da micro-economia.

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Medo dos chineses? No way!!!

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Ao longo dos anos, neste blogue, assumimos o nosso dever missionário de divulgar que existem alternativas ao negócio do preço mais baixo, alternativas que geram maior valor acrescentado e maiores produtividades, sem o choradinho do costume de querer fechar o portão do proteccionismo.

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Basta combater onde podemos fazer a diferença!

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A revista strategy+business publica um artigo sobre o tema do regresso da manufactura aos Estados Unidos: "The Case for Backshoring":

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"raised the possibility that U.S. manufacturers are getting serious about “backshoring” some of the production they shifted overseas in the wholesale offshoring movement that started in earnest in the 1990s.
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Backshoring is primarily an American phenomenon, because U.S. manufacturers have been much more aggressive about outsourcing than their Asian or European counterparts. Japanese companies experimented with outsourcing high-end items to factories in Southeast Asia and China, but quickly changed course after growing concerned about the loss of intellectual property and about disrupting the link between research and manufacturing. (Moi ici: Como o exemplo da Canon que apresentámos em 2006. Basta recorrer a esta Pedra de Roseta) As a result, Japanese companies generally farm out only the manufacturing of commodity products.
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But the logic behind backshoring is compelling enough that it cannot be easily dismissed as a mere short-term aberration. (Moi ici: Claro, basta escolher uma proposta de valor que privilegie a rapidez, a flexibilidade, a pequena série, a grande variedade. Depois, deixar as consequências dessa escolha borbulharem e surgirem naturalmente. Depois, ainda, fazer batota, forçar o que nos pode dar vantagem competitiva sustentada) Higher transportation costs as well as rising wages and raw materials prices in China, inevitable by-products of the huge gains that the developing country’s GDP has made despite the global recession, have frightened some U.S. companies away from Asia.

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NCR’s decision to backshore goes well beyond dollars and cents — and, in fact, may provide the most convincing rationale for the gains that backshoring can produce. The ATMs being made in Columbus now are NCR’s most sophisticated, capable of scanning checks and cash and eliminating the need for the customer to fill out a deposit slip. This feature has provided a welcome revenue lift for NCR — bringing in as much as US$50 million a year, significant for a company with $5 billion in annual sales. But these machines likely never would have been developed had large customers like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America not persistently prodded NCR to move in that direction. That type of potentially profitable interaction between NCR and its customers is difficult, and launching desirable new products is slowed considerably, NCR’s Dorsman says, when the manufacturing facilities are offshore. “We take our cue from our customers,” says Dorsman. “They are heavily involved in the development process. And with this new approach we’re taking, we can get innovative products to the market faster, no question.”
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Backshoring will be more prevalent at the high end of the technology spectrum, in industries such as telecommunications and health care that are sensitive to quality and fast product cycles or in cases in which companies feel they can profit from getting immediate and ongoing feedback from U.S. customers."

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Alguns postais, só a título de exemplo, sobre o regresso dos clientes, sobre o backshoring, sobre o fim das linhas de montagem, sobre a importância da proximidade: aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui, aqui e aqui.