Barilla Case Study

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1. What are the reasons for the increase in variability in Barilla’s supply chain? Ans: Currently Barilla’s supply chain is facing various problems ranging from complete stock outs of products when needed, poor communication within the organization, additional emphasis on promotional activities, increased lead time. The main reasons for increase in variability in Barilla’s supply chain are listed below: 1. Price Variations: Barilla’s Sales strategy was totally dependent on the promotions to market the product. The retailers used this strategy to their advantage by buying the product in large quantities whenever the price was lower. This trend is called forward buying and was used to their advantage. 2. Longer Lead Time: It took around 14 days for the receipt of goods at the distributers end from the date the order was placed and the average lead time being 10 days. This long lead time adds to variability and reduced service levels. 3. Improper Promotions: Sales promotions were not done in a correct manner and lot of promotion campaigns like volume discounts were offered and this ultimately led to an inflated demand and caused a lot of forecasting errors during operation. 4. No Limit on Order quantity range: There was no proper limit on how much a retailer can order in one transaction and hence there was high variability as retailers only placed orders when the product cost was low and during other seasons no order was placed. There should have been a minimum or maximum cap for the number of orders to be placed. 5. Too many SKUs: There were more than 800 different SKUs for dry products alone. Maintaining such large inventory was always a problem and it will definitely lead to variability no matter what the product type. 6. Improper Forecasting: Distributers did not use scientific forecasting techniques to track demand

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