ECR - Efficient Consumer Response Australiasia

 Frequent product launches have become the norm in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods industry.

An efficient, co-ordinated, end-to-end supply chain is an essential enabler of new product introductions. There is a need to align the product development processes, supply chain and ranging to ensure that time-to-market expectations and actual product introduction cycle-times are in synch. Because frequent product launches bring rapid SKU proliferation, there is also a need to develop formal product retirement processes that are aligned with supply chain obsolescence processes.

Some of the challenges include a lack of collaboration between trading partners; a proliferation of SKU’s; a lack of defined development processes and insufficient supply chain planning.

In the worst situation a new product is immediately out or stock after launch and the absence of an effective allocation process between trading partners results in an immediate loss of revenue and opportunity and possible longer term threat to the success of the product.

In a recent ECR Australasia study, ‘Maximising the Effectiveness of ECRA’ respondents were asked to rank the potential future work stream of new product introductions in terms of importance and suitability to ECR. For this issue respondents rated it 70% for importance and 48% for suitability. 

Objectives   

The objective of the project is to understand the operational inefficiencies and unnecessary costs for suppliers, retailers and wholesalers through the introduction of new product lines and delisting of others, with the aim of developing a road map to optimise the management of ranging decisions. 

Project team