Browsing by Author "Chapman, Paul"
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Item Open Access Enablers and inhibitors to horizontal collaboration between competitors: an investigation in UK retail supply chains(Cranfield University, 2006) Stephens, Charles; Chapman, PaulOver the last half-century, the development of physical distribution management has led to the establishment of logistics, which itself has developed into one of the key components of supply chain management. As different models of competition have developed in parallel, so the concept of competition between supply chains, as opposed to between firms, has been described. These two trends are striking in the context of UK grocery retailing. This market sector is described as at the leading edge of innovation and is arguably among the most efficient in the one world. The speed and efficiency of these retail supply chains has underpinned customer offerings of range and freshness and has contributed to the growth of supermarket chains and thus the concentration of retail power in the UK grocery market. These trends then raise two issues. Innovation in logistics and distribution management appears to be easy to copy and thus goods ideas tend to be adopted by competitors and best practise is quickly and uniformly applied. Competitive advantage is, therefore, short term only. Secondly, new organisational paradigms, such as the extended or virtual enterprise, support the concept of competition between vertically integrated supply chains. However, it is not necessarily the case that all elements of the supply chain must be in competition. Whilst range, branding and procurement policies may continue to offer competitive advantage over time, the logistics elements of the supply chain might afford an opportunity for collaboration between competing supply chains, as these elements contribute no long term advantage to individual firms. New models for corporate strategy argue that collaboration between competitors is not only possible but desirable in certain areas of operations and under certain circumstances. Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) offers a set of tools for exploring potential areas of collaboration in the retail and grocery markets. However, in spite of collaboration in other areas and predictions by authors of collaboration in logistics operations, there is little evidence of applications in practise. This research set out to explore why this might be so. Research in the UK grocery market led to the proposition of a series of enablers and inhibitors for horizontal logistics collaborations, which were then tested in two other UK retail contexts.Item Open Access Methods for measuring shrinkage(Palgrave Macmillan, 2006-10-01T00:00:00Z) Chapman, Paul; Templar, SimonThis paper presents findings from research amongst European grocery retailers into their methods for measuring shrinkage. The findings indicate that: there is no dominant method for valuing or stating shrinkage; shrinkage in the supply chain is frequently overlooked; data is essential in pinpointing where and when loss occurs and that many retailers collect data at the stock-keeping unit (SKU) level and do so every 6 months. These findings reveal that it is difficult to benchmark between retailers due to inconsistencies between measurement methods and that there are opportunities for many of the retailers surveyed to improve their shrinkage measurement by adopting known good practice.Item Open Access Scoping the contextual issues that influence shrinkage measurement.(Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2006-11-01T00:00:00Z) Chapman, Paul; Templar, SimonMeasures and measurement systems must reflect the context to which they are applied (Neely, 1999), requiring that the contextual issues relating to retail shrinkage must be identified as a necessary precursor when measuring shrinkage. Without considering these issues any decision on which method of shrinkage measurement to employ will be uninformed, arbitrary and at best intuitive.Item Open Access Shrinkage in Europe: stock loss in the fast-moving consumer goods sector(Palgrave Macmillan, 2002-10) Beck, Adrian; Bilby, Charlotte; Chapman, PaulThis paper presents the findings of the first pan-European survey of companies within the Fast Moving Consumer Goods sector. It provides a discussion on the definition of shrinkage and presents data on the extent, nature and causes of stock loss throughout the supply chain – from point of manufacture through to point of sale – as well as some of the approaches adopted to tackle the problem. It highlights the role of security and audit departments in minimising losses, and the need for companies to adopt a more strategic approach by involving not only other parts of their own organisations, but also cooperating with other companies within the supply chain. It concludes that unless companies begin to realise the extent of the problem and that all points of the supply chain are vulnerable to a wide range of threats, then losses will continue to represent a significant proportion of their annual turnover.Item Open Access Tackling shrinkage in the fast moving consumer goods supply chain: developing a methodology(Palgrave Macmillan, 2003-04) Beck, Adrian; Bilby, Charlotte; Chapman, PaulShrinkage for retailers and suppliers of Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) continues to be a significant problem, one that seems resilient to ameliorative actions. In an effort to respond to the apparent failure of existing approaches to loss prevention, this chapter introduces a ‘process-orientated’ approach to tackling shrinkage. The approach consists of a prescriptive series of seven steps that form a stock loss reduction ‘road map’, together with associated techniques and tools for undertaking each step.