Supply chain management at Honey Baked Ham of Ohio

Résumé du document

A company presents different issues concerning its supply chain system. As we can see, there are 51 stores spread in 10 states. This seems to be a lot to manage for only one operator working out of Ohio. 9 of the 10 markets are over 1,000 miles away. We can also see that the different stores offer different menus since they deal with local suppliers, who may not offer products similar to the ones in the other stores. The 51 stores get what they find locally and it may vary from one store to another. This is the result of the hybrid supply system, which tries to use both a centralized system for dried products and local suppliers for fresh products. It is thus, too diversified. Another issue is the short-life of some products, like vegetables, etc. The demand is pretty unequal all the year long, and many factors make it vary. It is hard to forecast demand and consequently, they may have large losses with those short-life products, which cannot be kept too long. In the different factors that make the demand vary, we can find seasons, holidays, weather, etc.

Extraits

[...] Supply chain management at Honey Baked Ham of Ohio 1. In an effort to improve the HBH supply chain system, what operational issues can you identify from the case? What are the causes of these problems? The company presents different issues concerning its supply chain system. As we can read in the case, there are 51 stores spread in 10 states, what represents a lot to manage for only one operator present in Ohio of the 10 markets are over 1,000 miles away. [...]

[...] It is hard to forecast the demand and consequently, they may have large losses with those short-life products, which cannot be kept too long. In the different factors that make the demand vary, we can find seasons, holidays, but also things like weather, etc. The stocks are also increasing. Since a short time, some of the stores are offering new products because they developed a new café business, which needs supplies it didn't already have. It increases the supplies need and organisation, what makes the task even more difficult. [...]

[...] The company has got several aspects to take care about such as: An organization of 51 stores through 10 markets, - Hybrid distribution model, - Regional specificities (menus), - Higher fluctuating seasonal demand, - Different types of products which require different stock-keeping units, - And a growing activity and the wish to develop and expand the business. The benchmarking is a process that focuses on evaluating process, in order to find the best practices. There are several forms of benchmarking the process, the financial, the product, and the performances benchmarking, for examples. Thus the bench marking process would be perfect to develop a new and better supply chain management approach and answer to the growing activity and wish to expand the activity. The idea is first to identify the company and its supply chain management problems. [...]

[...] A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules. Using a common database will allow information to be more reliable, accessible, and easily shared. Furthermore, a modular software design is a variety of programs that can be added on an individual basis to improve the efficiency of the business. In order to know, to have an idea of what is the consumption of the stores, to anticipate and to calculate for the next year what the company need for this period (because it is a seasonal demand, the company have to know that in order to avoid the loss of product, and has an “overproduction” the software will help the company to make this kind of things and to be more productive and profitable. [...]

[...] This approach is in some aspects similar to an audit; we listed earlier already the different problem areas of HBH. On a second step, the benchmarking idea is to identify companies with the same process, to identify what are those companies doing better than ours in terms of supply chain management. Leaders of a market and innovating companies might be the right examples to learn about and maybe to follow; knowing they are successful or promising. In our case, HBH Company's field is the food retail and the fresh fast-food market. [...]