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Please respond to this with your own opinions. Process…
Please respond to this with your own opinions.
Process Mapping is a course of action that businesses use shared understanding of exactly how materials flow throughout the supply chain and where inventory is stored during production stages (Quigg, 2020). It is a flowchart that many consider the first and most important step a business will engage in when developing an automation strategy, as it allows team members from other departments to conceptualize the functional approach of different departments, presenting everyone with the total concept of the supply chain. It is imperative that process mapping identifies and includes insight from various stakeholders within the supply chain as “process maps are a product of collective intelligence, so representatives from each involved area should be invited to participate in process mapping” (Heher & Chen, 2017, p.88). An advantage of process mapping is that it saves on cost as it improves the efficiency of the supply chain, is used to identify any bottlenecks in the supply chain, and helps manage supply chain risk (Moin et al., 2019).
Application/Example
On August 12, 2020, the Lowe’s home improvement company announced that they were upgrading their supply chain process. The announcement included the addition of 50 new cross-dock facility terminals, seven bulk distribution centers, and four e-commerce fulfillment centers, with one of those centers being based on the west coast (Zourmpanos, 2021). These changes will improve their home delivery segment and allow them to meet the increasing demand from their “do-it-yourself” customers and “provide more same-day and next-day service offerings and enable faster e-commerce shipping across the country” (Zourmpanos, 2021). Before this transformation, Lowe’s supply chain map process was developed with a strategy that prioritized in-store customers. As Lowe’s does not have an individual brand, an example of their supply chain map process consisted of ordering end products from one of their many vendors, such as General Electric, Samsung, and DeWalt, then shipping the product to one of their distribution centers. From there, it was freighted to one of their stores where the customer could purchase the product. By collaborating with vendors and analyzing online customer behavior, Lowe’s forecasted the need to develop new strategies to meet the inventory demands of their E-Commerce customers, one of Lowe’s fastest-growing areas in their supply chain (Zourmpanos, 2021). Lowe’s upgraded its supply chain process to capitalize on the direct-to-consumer market. Lowe’s wanted to make delivery direct to the customer more efficient. So, they revamped their mapping process by removing the need to deliver inventory to stores, where the customer had to come in, purchase it, and then get it to their home, and instead focused on delivering products from the warehouse to a cross-dock facility, then to a fulfillment center where it will be delivered straight to the customer’s home, eliminating the need to come in the store at all (Garland, 2022).
Lowe’s used process mapping to increase in-store sales by allowing store employees more time to focus on the customer instead of whether they can deliver the product and improve their online sales by 80 percent in the first quarter of 2020 (Garland, 2020).
Questions for Classmates
Lowe’s used input from the customer and their employees during their process mapping. However, this data was possibly misaligned because the collected data may occasionally not be sufficient to complete the process map or may turn out to be twisted by judgment or employee discontent (Quigg, 2020). Should the input from the stakeholders be weighted when process mapping? For example, should the input from the customer outweigh the input from the employee? Or is input from the mid-level manager more important than input from a front-line employee?
References
Garland, M. (2022, April 13). How Lowe’s Retooled its Logistics Network to Meet Pandemic Demand. Supply Chain Dive. Retrieved from https://www.supplychaindive.com/news/lowes-adapting-supply-chain-challenges-e-commerce-demand-don-frieson/621718/
Heher, Y. K., & Chen, Y. (2017). Process Mapping: A Cornerstone of Quality Improvement. Cancer Cytopathology, 125(12), 887-890. https://doi.org/10.1002/cncy.21946
Moin, C. J., Iqbal, M., Malek, A. B. M. Abdul, & Haque, R. (2019). Time-Based Process Mapping for Lead Time Compression in the Apparel Supply Chain: A Case Study. International Journal of Mathematical, Engineering and Management Sciences, 5(1), 96-107. https://doi.org/10.33889/IJMEMS.2020.5.1.009
Quigg, B. (2020). Supply Chain Management. McGraw Hill Education.
Zourmpanos, Y. (2021, July 21). Lowe’s: A Dive Into Its Transformation Plan, Operations and Fundamentals. Seeking Alpha. Retrieved from https://seekingalpha.com/article/4440394-lowes-a-dive-into-its-transformation-plan-operations-and-fundamentals
