Black Monday – Supply Chain problems

I posted a blog last week on Warehouse Management and the Mobile Supply Chain at the end of which I talked about the results of some research by Temando reported in The Retail Technology Review, with the title “UK Retailers are not well prepared for key shipping challenges this Christmas”. Well today I received an email from Logistics Manager headed “Delivery problems emerge as Black Friday breaks records“. Both Argos and Tesco Direct have admitted issues in being able to deliver orders on Black Monday on time. Reading through the article there is an important quote from Stuart Higgins, retail partner at LCP Consulting. “Retailers continue to pursue a faster and freer agenda which is simply placing too much pressure on their back end infrastructure and carrier partners to deliver.” Confirms what Temando found about many retailers’ back-end shipping processes not being totally automated.

So it is still buyer beware as delivery promises at busy times are not always capable of being fulfilled because the processes and infrastructure necessary is not in place to handle the flexibility of demand when it reaches high volumes.