Expectations of a CEO regarding the supply chain

Retailers accounted for 47 percent of the 215 participants at the CIES conference held in Vienna, in early October. Current trends and concepts were illustrated by the example of a specific company in a presentation held by Michel Eeckhout, CEO Delhaize Belgium under the title “ Expectations of a CEO regarding the supply chain “. According to him, the challenge we are facing today is to develop an integrated and consumer focused system in the supply chain. The supply chain is a multifunctional system which includes warehousing, logistics, transport, retail, invoicing and IT activities, optimising the movement of products and information. The main advantage of an integrated supply chain is that it supports a consumer focused strategy and can boost revenues and profitability by optimising access to products. Delhaize has a vision to make the supply chain demand focused and the process transparent. In August 2008, Delhaize Belgium had to supply 760 stores in five distribution channels. 280 trucks were used for delivering fresh products, 170 for packaged food and 150 for beverages. 80 percent of fresh products ordered in the morning were delivered within 24 hours. 80 percent of evening orders for other food products were delivered the next day. 60-70 percent of the packaging material used for fresh products is reusable. Future development is aimed at reducing the size of deliveries to smaller stores in order to supply a wide assortment of smaller stocks. In transportation, trucks visit a larger number of stores on a single route in order to reduce costs. Several methods have been introduced to optimise the movement of goods, like the automatic portioning of fruits and vegetables and plastic crates. Uniform palettes are to be introduced and double deck trucks will be used as well. RFID will used for palettes and boxes. Software allows suppliers to monitor stocks in stores. Measures like these are intended to reduce the time needed for delivering orders by 50 percent and to reduce the proportion of mistakes and shortages. Another objective is to reduce the quantity of goods disappearing in the supply chain.