Luen Thai, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ruentex
Case Study: Luen Thai, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ruentex
The key issues that affect the Luen Thai, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ruentex, are already common problems within the apparel industry dynamics. In the industry, the idea of collaborated end to end management of the supply chain was more of a theory than what was actually being done. Supply chains had been designed for mass manufacturing. Business processes sometimes operated in silos and had very limited technology that did not allow for very effective communication. The information apparel companies gathered was old and caused for decision making to be made on past information. This resulted in low service orientation and lack of customer management throughout the industry. Many of these problems are found in Luen Thai, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ruentex. For the three partners, the lack of receiving up to date real time information is holding back the supply chain. This is mainly because of each partner operating in a silo and only exchanging bare minimum information to put product on the shelves. Polo recognizes that they have implemented technology through their own supply chain such as EDI, intranets, and customer and supplier databases. The issue was that this technology was fragmented and when information on their technology was communicated to Luen Thai and Ruentex, it was done using old methods such as phone calls, fax, and email. This method of communication allowed for polo to fulfill their own functions and did not allow for the full synchronisation of data and product databases with the other partners. Polo’s silo approach was also not helping polo’s ability to track inbound transportation and logistics. They were tracking shipments for their wholesale division using an access database that received advanced shipment notices from vendors and freight forwarders and the retail dvision uses excel spreadsheets to keep track of information with manufacturers. On both sides of this there was still
The key issues that affect the Luen Thai, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ruentex, are already common problems within the apparel industry dynamics. In the industry, the idea of collaborated end to end management of the supply chain was more of a theory than what was actually being done. Supply chains had been designed for mass manufacturing. Business processes sometimes operated in silos and had very limited technology that did not allow for very effective communication. The information apparel companies gathered was old and caused for decision making to be made on past information. This resulted in low service orientation and lack of customer management throughout the industry. Many of these problems are found in Luen Thai, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ruentex. For the three partners, the lack of receiving up to date real time information is holding back the supply chain. This is mainly because of each partner operating in a silo and only exchanging bare minimum information to put product on the shelves. Polo recognizes that they have implemented technology through their own supply chain such as EDI, intranets, and customer and supplier databases. The issue was that this technology was fragmented and when information on their technology was communicated to Luen Thai and Ruentex, it was done using old methods such as phone calls, fax, and email. This method of communication allowed for polo to fulfill their own functions and did not allow for the full synchronisation of data and product databases with the other partners. Polo’s silo approach was also not helping polo’s ability to track inbound transportation and logistics. They were tracking shipments for their wholesale division using an access database that received advanced shipment notices from vendors and freight forwarders and the retail dvision uses excel spreadsheets to keep track of information with manufacturers. On both sides of this there was still