11/17/2013

The most representative strategy between ZARA and H&M: Supply Chain Management



The most different part in the supply chain management between ZARA and H&M is that ZARA has its own factories to produce its collection, but H&M does not.

ZARA



(1)   ZARA has followed a pull model because it creates more than one thousand designs every month according to sale volumes in physical stores and current and the latest trends. As in the “Customer’s Relation”, ZARA monitors its customers’ spending in the store to evaluate and understand what kinds of designs will be accepted and bought by customers and then the ideas will be considered in the next designs.

(2)   ZARA has a fast turnover because each good is produced in a few quantities, which can make it realize that what kinds of designs are attractive and accepted for its customers. Moreover, it is also a good chance for ZARA to create new designs in the market and lower the inventory rates.

(3)   Since ZARA has its own factories to produce its collection, the only thing is to find the suitable supplier which can provide raw materials with high quality for ZARA. In order to avoid that it will be over-dependent on some supplier, ZARA tries to find as many suppliers as possible; this strategy also shortens the reaction time for the suppliers to deliver materials and decreases purchasing costs, which contributes to ZARA’s features of low prices and fast distribution.

(4)   ZARA has very strong IT systems for its good distribution. All the finished products are shipped back to Spain, the central location and headquarter, and then these goods are distributed to different countries.

Note: In this analysis, we only focus on the production and distribution of ZARA. As for the rest part of ZARA’s supply chain strategy, please take a look in “The most representative strategy between ZARA and H&M: Customers’ Relation.”




H&M



(1)   Production and Outsourcing:

a.    Through local production offices, H&M finds the best independent suppliers and outsources to them to produce its collections.
b.   H&M’s production is situated in those countries where there are low labor cost, such as Mainland China and Turkey, to decrease its costs. Around 60% of its production is in Asia.
c.  The production offices are responsible for purchasing raw materials and choose the best manufacturers according to the quality asked by the design department in the headquarter.
d.  Even when checking on the quality of its products, the offices should try their best to avoid their production environment from pollution.

(2)   Distribution and Product Management:

a.  More than 90% of the finished products are delivered via sea and land transportation; the rest proportion is transported by air.
b.   The logistic center deals with massive information about the transportation of products by using ICT in order to increase its efficiency of running and delivering.
c.    H&M uses its order tracking system to see results of the achieved percentage of scheduled progress and goods examination.
d.   ICT is linked to the order tracking system, which controls its products from designing, manufacturing, distributing to selling in physical stores.


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1 comment:

  1. Great post. Keep it up. Thank you so much for sharing your valuable blog. Warehouse Audit | Inventory Audit | Visibility Audit


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