Summer 2008

Integration of people, process and IT is one of the six most commonly cited supply chain challenges facing retailers and their suppliers, according to research by White Space Insight on behalf of Unipart Group and Manhattan Associates.

According to the survey, which focused on senior supply chain professionals from some of the UK's leading retailers and manufacturers, problems in this sector include lack of flexibility, management information, effective forecasting tools, product tracking technology and systems for the effective management of people. All this is making the pursuit of supply chain perfection an elusive goal, the survey concludes.

As supply chain change programmes can be inherently risky – not least those initiatives that involve large-scale systems changes – the research suggests that it is not unusual for even the larger retailers to make do with long-standing legacy systems, rather than expose the organisation to the risk of major change.

The alternative approach, advocated by Unipart and Manhattan, is to reduce those risks by adopting what they term 'lean' working practices in order to understand, measure and improve supply chain processes.