Over the last half-century, the development of physical distributionmanagement has led to the establishment of logistics, which itself hasdeveloped into one of the key components of supply chain management. Asdifferent models of competition have developed in parallel, so the concept...

This paper presents the findings of the first pan-European survey of companies withinthe Fast Moving Consumer Goods sector. It provides a discussion on the definition ofshrinkage and presents data on the extent, nature and causes of stock loss throughout thesupply chain – from point of...

Purpose – This research seeks to identify and apply techniques that can be used in a supply chain context to diagnose the causes of variability in delivery lead time. Design/methodology/approach – A literature review was conducted and a number of quality management (QM), techniques were...

Purpose – Improving alignment between supply chain and new product development (NPD) can enhance market impact and revenue growth. Additionally, it can remove a lot of frustration for supply chain managers, who currently are often the last to find out about NPD, whereas their contribution is...

Purpose – Measures and measurement systems must reflect the context to which they are applied, requiring that the contextual issues relating to retail shrinkage must be identified as a necessary precursor when measuring shrinkage. Without considering these issues any decision on which method...

This paper presents findings from research amongst European grocery retailers into their methods for measuring shrinkage. The findings indicate that: there is no dominant method for valuing or stating shrinkage; shrinkage in the supply chain is frequently overlooked; data is essential in...

Purpose – To expand beyond existing research on the integration of supply chain and new product development that has a limited focused on the need to pre-inform supply chain before product launch, the need for new product development to consider the impact of product design on supply chain...

Agile supply chains enable companies to respond to unpredictable changes in market requirements faster than competitors. A key characteristic of an agile supply chain is the ability to respond to the customer.

Shrinkage for retailers and suppliers of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) continues to be a significant problem, one that seems resilient to ameliorative actions. In an effort to respond to the apparent failure of existing approaches to loss prevention, this chapter introduces a...