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Today's News , 2003
• New President at NIT League Major Study on Retailing  Reprint permission
The retail industry has embarked on what is claimed to be the largest review of supply chain best practices ever conducted in the industry. The information will not only provide an all-encompassing view of best practices in retailing, but also offer important lessons for other industries. A steering committee that includes supply chain executives from Best Buy, The Home Depot, OfficeMax, Rite Aid and Target is spearheading the project, with Atlanta-based consulting firm Percite Solutions organizing and implementing the study. The current participants represent more than $600 billion in sales and 80,000 outlets, although enrollment is at an early stage and the organizers are looking to recruit more companies. "It is time we got a good baseline of where our industry is," said Wayne Bourne, vice president of transportation, Best Buy. The study team has created a series of questionnaires that drill down into the fine detail of supply chain management in retailing. "They want something that is relevant to them," said John Traendly, managing partner, Percite Solutions. In more typical benchmarking studies comparisons are made between three to five organizations, he explained, "but it becomes impractical for a single retailer to go beyond that." Moreover, the benchmarking information that is generally available "are not retail-oriented," he added. This exercise is more detailed than regular reviews "probably by a factor of 10," Traendly said. In the first phase, now under way, detailed information on supply chain practices is being collected via online interviews. Participants will then be given an opportunity to add more detail during a series of regional meetings. All individual responses will be kept confidential. The findings will be presented in a series of reports by the end of the year.
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