Week 6

Q.11. Littlewoods have several parts to their management strategy for their upstream and downstream supply chains.

First of all is the push vs pull supply models. Littlewoods is a push supply model driven company. Their customers choose from a selection of products on the Littlewoods website. However customers could email Littlewoods and request a product and Littlewoods may provide it. The push model makes more sense for Littlewoods to use as they have a large amount of customers and products and dont make their own products, so it would be mayhem if they had to get custom products for their customers.

Littlewoods have alot of products and they are all supplied from different popular brands. They totally rely on their third party suppliers and have a close relationship with them. This is virtual intrigation, which is the most appropriate form for Littlewoods because they only sell online. This means that the third party suppliers have control of the majority of supply chain activities.

Above is the Littlewoods internal supply chain.

Littlewoods will be dealing with high volume distribution, for this Littlewoods will need a carrier to transport the goods. Thankfully they deliver the products themselves. This reduces cost.

Partnership management is very important. It is important to keep your suppliers happy. Littlewoods has many suppliers, so this is a big task.

Littlewoods use procurment on a regular basis. Littlewoods purchase all of their products from suppliers. They need to purchase new clothing every season and technological products when there are newer ones available. Littlewoods repeat purchase off supliers such as, Samsung, Sony, Diesel etc. Littlewoods needs to consider factors like delivery and handling, marginal benefit, and price fluctuations.

A value chain is a chain of activities. Products pass through all activities of the chain in order and at each activity the product gains some value. The chain of activities gives the products more added value than the sum of added values of all activities. It is important not to mix the concept of the value chain with the costs occurring throughout the activities.

Advertisement