The company is a distributor of industrial gases and hardgoods. They have a network of 25 branches in Ontario with 12 of them concentrated in GTA. The business contributed by the GTA region is around 50% of the total business. The company has its gas filling plant in GTA and then delivers the cylinders to branch locations by trailers every week.

The gas deliveries have been going smooth, but the hardgoods have started to cause issues due to the longer ETA from vendors and also uncoordinated branches. There is an ERP system implemented but the inventory management is done manually. This is causing unused inventory at some branches and stockouts at other. They also have a central warehouse but it majorly stores the private label products by the company.

In the above scenario what is the associated problems? What will be solution? What kind of supply chain technologies can be used? What is execution plan of those technologies? What are the challenges foreseen?