Polo Ralph Lauren Case
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1.
Polo Ralph Lauren is an American apparel company that was founded in the 1970’s. When it was founded it had three branches in the apparel business: design and development, manufacturer management, and inventory/stock handling. Because they did not want to own factories, they outsourced the garment manufacturing to Luen Thai, an apparel manufacturing company in China. Luen Thai got their fabric supply from the textile firm Ruentex in Taiwan. Not only was Luen Thai responsible for garment manufacturing, they were also in charge of product quality, making sure the deliveries were on time to Polo, and managing Advanced Shipment Notices, which ensured that information about the products (such as SKU numbers, carton and pallet numbers, and quantity) was sent to Polo ahead of the product shipment. A third party logistics operator was used to deliver the products to Polo’s warehouses in the United States where the inventory was then organized for distribution. Polo’s warehouses then delivered the goods to the different retail outlets.
Originally, Polo’s supply chain was set up to take advantage of the participating companies’ competencies. Because Ruentex and Luen Thai are located in areas of the world that have less expensive labor, the textile and apparel manufacturing were done there. Polo Ralph Lauren did the designing because it is a more complex process and involves a lot of technical specifications. Polo Ralph Lauren is also located in the United States which is the country that buys the final product, so the designers there knew better what kinds of designs would sell.
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This kind of supply chain worked well for Polo Ralph Lauren in the past. There were lags in information sharing which caused inventory buildups, stock outs, and less efficient logistics, but overall Ralph