role of merchandiser in supply chain managment

1. Submitted By
1. Tarikul Islam (ID: 2017-2-4-008)
2. Md. Enamul Hoque (ID: 2017-2-4-013)
3. Jahirul Alam Chowdhury ( ID: 2017-2-4-010)
4.Md. Rasel Hossen (ID: 2017-2-4-014)
Submitted To
Mahmuda Akter
Assistant Professor
Dept. of Apparel Engineering
Bangladesh University of Textiles

2. Introduction
Supply Chain Management is the integration of key business processes from end user
through original suppliers that provides products, services, and information that add
value for customers and other stakeholders.
Supply chain management is not just a process for reducing costs and achieving greater
operational efficiencies within an organization. Although these are important
considerations, modern supply chain management involves the strategic alignment of
end-to-end business processes to achieve market and economic value, as well as
competitive advantage.
The relative ease of setting up clothing companies, coupled with the prevalence of
developed country protectionism in this sector, has led to an unparalleled diversity of
garment exporters in the third world. Furthermore, the backward and forward linkages
are extensive, and help to account for the large number of jobs associated with the
industry. The apparel value chain is organized around five main parts: raw material
supply, including: natural and synthetic fibres, provision of components, such as the
yarns and fabrics manufactured by textile companies; production networks made up of
garment factories, including their domestic and overseas subcontractors; export channels
established by trade intermediaries; and marketing networks at the retail level.

3. What’s a Supply Chain?
 The term “supply chain management” arose in the late 1980s and came into
widespread use in the 1990s. Prior to that time, businesses used terms such as
“logistics” and “operations management” instead. A supply chain is the
collection of processes and resources required to make and deliver a product to
the final customer
 Some definitions of a supply chain are offered below:
 • “A supply chain is the alignment of firms that bring products or services to
market.”—from Lambert, Stock, and Ellram in their book Fundamentals of
Logistics Management” (Lambert, Douglas M, et all., 1998, Fundamentals of
Logistics Management)
 • “A supply chain consists of all stages involved, directly or indirectly, in fulfilling
a customer request. The supply chain not only includes the manufacturer and
suppliers, but also transporters, warehouses, retailers, and customers
themselves” (Chopra, Sunil, and Peter Meindl, 2001, Supply Chain
Management: Strategy, Planning, and Operations).

4. Why is supply chain management important?
 Heightened competition with respect to
– Productivity
– Quality
– Flexibility/Responsiveness
 More complexity
 Integration instead of managing individual pieces
 Alignment with overall company strategy

5. Some Tangible Benefits of Good Supply Chain
Management
 Procurement cost reduction
 Inventory reduction
 Maintenance reduction
 Productivity improvement
 Order management improvement
 Transportation logistics cost reduction
 On-time delivery improvement
 Financial-close cycle improvements
 Cash management improvements
 Personnel reduction
 IT cost reduction

6. Typical Links of a Supply Chain

7. Each link in the chain/network might include…

8. The overall performance of a supply chain is driven by its
design and its operation
 Facilities
– No. of plants and their locations and capacities
– No. of warehouses/distribution centers (DCs), their locations and capacities
– No. of retails outlets and their locations
 Inventory
– Inventory control strategies
– Storage facilities
– How costs are balanced against service
 Transportation and storage resources
– Warehousing, distribution and logistics strategies
– Modes of transport used
 Suppliers
– How are they sourced?
– In-house vs. outsourcing balance
 Human Resources

9. A supply chain can be viewed as having three
integrated segments

10. Supply Chain Segments

11. Flow of Supply Chain

12. A Conceptual Framework of SCM

13. Supply chain planning and decision-making
phases

14. Focus of Supply Chain

15. Drivers of Supply Chain Performance

16. Cycle View of Supply Chains

17. Flows in a Supply Chain

18. Push VS Pull Supply Chain

19. Order Delivery Lead Time
Source
Make
components
Assembly Delivery
Order
Penetration
Point Order Delivery Lead
Time
Customer
Order
Supply Chain Lead Time

20. Supply Chain Stages
 A typical supply chain may involve a variety of stages. These
supply chain stages include: Customers, Retailers,
Wholesalers/distributors, Manufacturers, Raw material
suppliers.
 Each stage in a supply chain is connected through the flow of
products, information, and funds. These flows often occur in
both directions and may be managed by one of the stages or an
intermediary.
Supplier Supplier
Distributor
Distributor
Retailer

21. Importance of Supply Chain Decisions
 Helps in achieving success
 Effective flow of goods and information
 Reduces the level of Inventory with the manufacturer
 Improved match between supply and demand
 Reason for company’s success

22. Reasons for Growing Importance
of Supply Chain
 Proliferation in product lines
 Shorter product life cycles
 Higher level of outsourcing
 Shift in power structure in the chain
 Globalization of manufacturing

23. Bangladeshi Apparel Export
Competitiveness
 To improve supply chain efficiency, Bangladeshi
suppliers must develop collaborative links with buyers
working together as partners during the buying-
supplying process.
 Study on buyers’ perception of Bangladesh as an
apparel sourcing country has shown that while
Bangladesh was perceived satisfactorily on price,
quality, technology, flexibility, small order quantity
etc., it was perceived unfavorably on lead times,
responsiveness, communication, trust, meeting
contractual obligations, ethical standards etc

24. The linker of the chain
 In the apparel industry, merchandiser is the bridge
between the management (or) industry and the buyer.
Merchandiser is the person responsible to make the
product according to the buyer’s parameters and
satisfaction.
 Merchandisers coordinate various functions like
buying the raw material (which is required to finish
the product), making the apparel, finishing the
apparel, documentation (over all view), finally
shipping.

25. Role of merchandiser
 Merchandisers ensure that products appear in the
right store, or on a website, at the appropriate time and
in the correct quantities. This involves working closely
with the buying teams to accurately forecast trends,
plan stock levels and monitor performance.

26. Merchandiser managing supply chain
 Vendor management
 Product development
 Production management
 Internal collaboration
 outsourcing
 Inventory management
 Lead time

27. Vendor management
 Vendor relationship building and maintenance are
considered one of the most important firm activities
because vendors or suppliers are a critical element of a
firm’s profitability.

28. Product development
 The knowledge of product development and its role in
global sourcing seemed to be important for
merchandisers. The responsibility could be as small as
acquiring materials for product development,
extending to dynamic work relationships with product
developers. Merchandisers must understand the
product development process and international
sourcing. Also a time and action calendar, to
communicate the significance of timely follow-ups in
sourcing is a pre requisite

29. Production management
 The study data showed that merchandisers are
responsible for managing entire production or
manufacturing processes . production, merchandisers
are responsible for three major production factors –
cost, on-time delivery and quality. To achieve the
objectives of cost, delivery, and quality, merchandisers
are responsible for resolving production issues and
problems with vendors. They must know different
objectives of costing and quality assurance. Other
responsibilities, such as scheduling, vendor
performance tracking, and quality evaluation may help
achieve cost, delivery, and quality objectives.

30. Internal collaboration-
 Collaboration helps to foster internal relationships
between colleagues with whom individuals can consult
about work related matters that internal interactions
among different constituencies to negotiate and
resolve various conflicts may occur during planning,
managing, and executing processes.

31. Lead Time
 Lead time Customers always want their product
immediately after ordering and this on-going fight between
supplier and customer will never end. Still strategies are
made in order to shorten the lead times and to meet
customer demands in order to fulfill end consumer needs.

32. Outsourcing
 Every firm has its own core competency in which they excel and
represents them in a different manner. It sometimes becomes so
difficult for the firms to do all work under one roof which might lower
down the quality of the product or loss in the profit.

33. Vendor Management Inventory
 Vendor-managed inventory (VMI) is a fbusiness models in which the
buyer of a product provides certain information to a supplier (vendor)
of that product and the supplier takes full responsibility for
maintaining an agreed inventory of the material.

34. Supply chain in li and fung
 The huge selection & variety of consumer products
available through its sourcing network, As a Supply
Chain manager cross lots of producers & countries, Li
& Fung also influences its strengths in custom product
design & development through raw material & factory
sourcing, production planning & management, quality
assurance & shipping control to provide complete
global sourcing solutions for its customers as shown in
the figure

35. Li & Fung Supply chain structure

36. Supply chain in zara
Zara work on a principle that shorter product lifecycle means greater
customer satisfaction. They also focus on demand base production
which leads to very little inventory in the zaras supply chain which also
ensure low working capital.

37. Zara supply chain structure

38. Supply chain business process
integration involves
collaborative work between buyers and
suppliers
 joint product development
common systems, and shared
information

39. key supply chain
Operating an integrated supply chain
requires a continuous information flow.
However, in many companies,
management has concluded that
optimizing product flows cannot be
accomplished without implementing a
process approach.

40. The key supply chain
processes stated by
 Customer relationship
management
 Customer service management
 Demand management style
 Order fulfilment
 Manufacturing flow
management

41. • Supplier relationship management
• Product development and
commercialization
• Internal and external collaboration
• Initiatives to reduce lead time
• Customer-level forecasting

42. Modern Demand and Supply
Chain Management Systems
 As competition increases and customer service is
becoming more and more important to
differentiate from competitor’s logistics and
supply chain management is continuing to gain
importance.
 Supply chain management is now taking logistics
management one step further by integrating
beyond company barriers, upstream and
downstream with its suppliers and customers.

43. Trends in supply chain
Integration of supply chain is getting better
in every company as market turns its position
and a firm has to manage their
responsibilities accordingly. From the past
two decades many improvements and trends
have occurred in supply chain which has
made the market working in a positive and
efficient way. Some of them are as follows:

44. Use of technology :
By using technology a merchandiser can
change the entire infrastructure of
supply chain and logistics. Hundreds
and thousands of items were counted
manually in the warehouses, there was
no possibility of keeping the data in
records unless it was written manually
but different systems was introduced in
order to fulfil the requirement.

45. Examples :
 EPOS (electronic point of sales),
 RFID (radio frequencyidentification) etc
 Biggest examples these days are ERP
(enterprise resource planning),

46. Conclusion
 From definition, the supply chain involves all the activities in delivering
product from raw material to the final customer. The supply chain activities
span from internal organization to external trading partners of suppliers,
carriers, third-party companies and information system providers.
 1. With the growing demands of material and that of business, the Supply
Chain Management has taken an important role throughout the world.
 2. It has taken its own shape in the textile industries where large quantities are
in demand with varieties of product range.
 3. In the textile industries, there are high market fluctuations which make the
Supply Chain more critical and hence an appropriate management is required
in this industry.
 4. The cost of diesel and fuel price has also direct impact on this Supply Chain
and the management needs to be more systematic.
 5. At every stage of demand and supply, proper production planning is very
much essential.
 6. At production stage, the technical and commercial aspects are to be taken
care of in order to keep the supply chain intact.

47. References
 Jayant Rajgopal, Ph.D., P.E. “Supply Chains: Definitions &
Basic Concepts”, PA 15261.
 Douglas M. Lambert, “Supply Chain Management”, The
Ohio State University and University of North Florida.
 Dr. B. Thangaraj, K. Bagyalakshmi, “A Study on role of
merchandiser on achieving supply chain efficiency in
Tirupur apparel Units”, International Journal of Applied
Research 2015; 1(13): 25-27.
 Jimmy K.C. Lam, “Textile and apparel supply chain
management in Hong Kong”, Institute of Textiles and
Clothing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hunghom,
Hong Kong.