Supply Chain Management

David Tirrell

10/23/12

SCM 401

Gene’s, Inc. Case Analysis

1. PROBLEM STATEMENT

Gene’s, Inc. a dominant retail company whose focus is on high quality jeans, needs to reduce costs, maintain exceptional customer service, while improving their logistics speed of getting their product to their markets efficiently. This company is faced with many problems which include remarkably long product forecasts, extended backorders, excessive amounts of premium freight, and an increased amount of intercompany transfers. These problems generate and increase customer complaints, which damages Gene’s Inc.’s business.

2. ANALYSIS

Gene’s Inc.’s headquarters are located in San Francisco, California. They have sales in more than 100 countries, although their primary market is in the United States. They have been in business for over 100 years, but their operations have changed in the most recent decade. These changes stemmed from a variety of sources such as an increased amount of small, fast, niche competitors and an increase of domestic manufacturing costs.

Since retail logistics are different than most normal goods, Gene’s Inc. is trying to reduce their costs and get their products to their products markets quick and efficiently. Retail is driven by what is “trendy” or the general views of what’s popular in the eyes of consumers. With this comes the market feature of a very small shelf life because trends are constantly changing. The estimated shelf life is only two months, which is tiny compared to most goods.

Costs have been reduced costs by outsourcing their manufacturing jobs to countries that have more lenient labor laws than the United States. These countries can be broken down by region starting with Central/South American countries and Southeast Asia. The Central/South American countries include Mexico and Panama, while Southeast Asia includes India and China. Gene’s Inc. attains their raw materials from similar regions of the world through the...