- May 12, 2016
- 3:29 pm
- John Caltagirone
- no comments
Need Better Delivery Performance? Get a New Playbook
Adrian Gonzalez’s article, Target Cracks Down on Suppliers: Same Old Same Old Approach, Same Old Same Old Results explains how Target and Walmart are tightening delivery windows to improve inbound performance. He notes this old strategy and wonders what would happen if the “800 pound gorillas” adapted a popular approach to parenting known as “positive discipline”. While this has potential, retailers can’t do this alone; nor can the shippers or carriers.
As a shipper, there are two things you have to do to get the best performance from your carriers: 1) Set them up for success: make sure their loads are ready when you say they will be, give them appropriate transit times, turn their equipment, etc. All the things frequently referred to as being a “shipper of choice”. 2) Ensure that you are as close to the top of your carrier’s priority list as possible. Every carrier has one and when something happens that is going to result in service failures for some customers, that’s how they prioritize. You achieve the latter by doing the former better than your competition.
Similarly, retailers (and all receivers) will get the service they need when they set up their suppliers (and the supplier’s carriers) for success: by being a desirable customer to deliver.
By most measures, carrier capacity is relatively available now. When the cycle turns as it inevitably will, non-preferred shippers will have freight on their docks and non-preferred receivers will have empty shelves.
Harry Haney, Assistant Director, Supply & Value Chain Center