Seven-Eleven in Japan

1.) The supply chain strategy of Seven Eleven in Japan include Responsive Supply Chain Strategy and Efficient Supply Chain Strategy, attempt to micro-match supply and demand by using the quick replenishment policy.

For the facility location, Seven Eleven Japan opened the majority of its new store in the areas with high population and existing clusters of stores adhering to its dominant strategy. This can easily to get information and responses from the customers as stores are close to where customers can walk to. Centralizing the stores also can get the maximum benefits of capacity aggregation and lower the transportation cost from the distribution center (DC) to the stores.

For the inventory management, Seven Eleven Japan created a system to grasp in real time the inventory situation for each merchandise item in every store, therefore, its staff would adjust the merchandising mix on the shelves based on consumption pattern throughout the day. Merchandise selection and display locations are frequency varied according to local events, changes of season and weather as well as customer preferences. Because of the system, it has achieved a very low inventory ratio but high responsiveness to customers.

For the transportation, Seven Eleven Japan used combined distribution centers (CDC) rather than direct store delivery (DSD) for store delivery. It required all suppliers to deliver to the DC where products were sorted by temperature. This reduced the transportation and increased the utilization of trucks cost because of aggregation of deliveries across multiple suppliers. Meanwhile, there was a distribution system which tightly linked the entire supply chain for all product categories was flexible enough to alter delivery schedules depending on customers’ demand. For example, ice-cream was delivery daily during summer but only thrice a week at other time.

For the information infrastructure, Seven Eleven Japan set up the information system to allow store managers to...