Distribution is the customer-facing  part of your supply chain.  It is the link between you and your customer and has a great impact on your customers’ perception of your company’s overall customer service.   Customer expectations (or demands) for quick, rapid order fulfillment vary greatly by industry, but there is a clear tendency to faster response by the customer.   Automotive suppliers have to deliver products to the assembly plants,  in some cases, several times per shift.   Big Box retailers (Wal-Mart, Costco, Home Depot for example) demand weekly replenishments from manufacturers.  Wal-Mart and Costco have experimented recently with direct replenishment daily based on information from their POS devices. 

At the same time that customers are demanding faster delivery, offshoring has lengthen lead times.  The only way to resolve this paradox is warehousing inventory.  These distribution warehouses (DC’s) separate or decouple finished goods from the vagaries of supply or manufacturing disruptions.  Most of the time, distribution centers are established by the customer service crisis of the moment rather than a well  thought-out distribution strategy.  

A distribution strategy lowers your overall investment in inventory and warehousing.  It addresses a host of issues:  where should warehouses be located, how many DC’s are required, what is the targeted customer service level, what is the breadth and depth of the inventory to achieve the level of customer service, are the warehouses to be company operated or operate by a third party logistics provider (3PL), what is the warehouse layout and storage requirements , what  are inventory and warehouse KPI’s, how and how often  is inventory replenished, how will traffic management be handled, what additional enabling technology is required?

Valacrity has years of experience in distribution and inventory management.  We help our clients in a number of areas:

·         Distribution Strategy development and performance audits

·         Warehousing location and layout

·         Materials handling and storage requirements

·         Total logistics cost modeling and optimization

·         Inventory  and replenishment strategies

·         Customer service metrics

·         Information systems requirements and implementation

We are offering for your company a free no-obligation distribution audit. At the end of this audit we will make recommendations for you to consider reducing the costs of and improving customer service levels in your distribution network