Abercrombie & Fitch Enhances Vendor Collaboration and In-Transit Delivery

Abercrombie & Fitch Co., a specialty retailer of casual apparel for men, women and children, has implemented a supply chain software solution to provide real-time visibility into the status of orders, shipments and in-transit inventory. The global, multi-mode visibility solution is designed to allow the retailer's logistics team to streamline its supply chain process from vendor to distribution center and collaborate with merchants and service providers to reduce costs, shipment delays and improve customer service.

With 30 trading partners and multiple international business units, Abercrombie & Fitch's logistics team needed a single, detailed level view of shipments and orders in-transit to track, manage exceptions, proactively pinpoint in-transit delays and respond to any potential logistics crisis. The retailer chose to integrate the Supply Chain Visibility solution from Management Dynamics with the Oracle Retail Merchandising System. The visibility solution allows merchants to monitor the delivery status of key orders and for the logistics team to proactively manage inbound shipments by milestones. With accurate shipment information earlier in the supply chain, Abercrombie & Fitch expects to improve store-level inventory allocations to reduce cycle time and achieve higher levels of availability.

"We needed to create reliability in our global supply chain with the ability to respond to actual and potential issues and tightly collaborate with our merchants, distribution centers and service providers," explains Lois Davis, vice president of global trade and transportation with Abercrombie & Fitch.  The visibility solution is designed to provide meaningful cost reductions, optimize the retailer's shipping options, and improve its customer service.

The key requirements of the logistics operations at Abercrombie & Fitch include:

? One central location for tracking critical shipment information across multiple sources, providing visibility to inventory in-transit and speeding the flow of goods from distribution to merchants;

? Advance notice of shipment information to improve cross-border logistics decisions;

? Data quality management technologies and business methodologies to ensure information accuracy, completeness and timeliness for all messages exchanged between trading partners;

? Event alerting capabilities that anticipate potential inventory receipt and fulfillment issues and prompt rapid resolution before they impact availability;

? Functionality for measuring, analyzing and improving the performance of suppliers, carriers and service providers with user-defined reports, scorecards and KPIs based on frontline data.

Source: http://logisticstoday.com/