The Opportunity
As with many retailers, vendor performance issues affected the velocity of their inventory movement. In addition to the normal quality issues retailers face, such as early/late shipments, carton labeling and ASN timeliness and accuracy, the retailer faced the additional challenge of long ship windows. The retailer's vice president of supply chain stated that "long ship windows add additional layers of complexity to our business, and this coupled with non-defined fixed pickup and delivery schedules was driving up our inventory value. The additional investment in inventory and its associated handling costs were affecting our overall profitability."