Please read the following case study and answer the question given at the end.

Campbell Soup Company , also known as Campbell’s, is an American producer of canned soups and related products.The company was set up in 1869 by fruit merchant Joseph Campbell and an icebox manufacturer Abraham Anderson. Today , Campbell manufactures a lot of varieties such as cream broccoli , double noodle and creamy and chicken noodle. The variants of these soups are present with low sodium,cholesterol, fat and calories in the range of healthy request soups. The company has expanded internationally to China, Japan, Australia, Argentina and Mexico etc.It had sales of US$6.1 billion in 2003. It has developed variants to adopt to local cultural differences. The company now also manufactures juices, beverages, sauces, biscuits and confectionary. Online sales are being done through netgrocer.com. The company has stringent quality system standards for all the ingredients including water,raw materials and elimination of heavy metal contents. Suppliers have stringent requirements to meet particularly good food manufacturing practices and control of purchased raw material. In an interview given by Christian Moye, the then vice president of strategic palnning , global supply chain of Campbell soup co, he admits to having the biggest supply chain challenge in maintaining a balance between cost ( on the management side) and customer foods ( on the retail and customer side).The key issues for the company are the product format,product differentiation, product customization and service customization.The retail distribution channel forms the most part of the distribution channel. Moye says that company aims to drive efficiencies through better information flow and information sharing through data synchronization and collaborative planning , forecasting and replenishment ( CPFR).

The company is focusing on case-size optimization as a way of maintaining product choice on the shelf , without adding a lot of inventory and may be even reducing inventory.The company is getting invoice accuracy rate higher while looking at the forward side of the supply chain.As far as the backward end (sourcing ) is concerned, the company is focusing on technology-enabled strategic sourcing e.g e- procurement comprising of e-auctions or internet –enabled negotiations. As a part of IT investment priorities , Campbell in addition to e-procurement is focusing on network optimization, and also sales and operations planning ( S&OP). It intends to join UCCnet ( group of of standards for e-commerce created by the uniform code council) and wants to have cosourcing or aggregated purchasing to get lower cost of raw materials. However , the company does not see much scope of freight consolidation to strive for a common truckload as the company is already predominantly a truckload kind. The company looks to have DCs in the same locations as other ‘big box’ stores such as Wal-Mart, P&G, Kraft etc because of the common geography and population factors. Commonly retailing /distribution thus cannot be ruled out. In 2003,the company did not have a DC in the north east US.The company prefers a near market,mixing centre DC, which may not give cost saving for Campbell but a service improvement.The company finds a real impact of internet based EDI on their business and it does not have to pay value added network ( VAN) charges. It also ensures visibility of transportation.The company joined worldwide retail exchange ( WWRE) which helped Campbell in data synchronization and e-procurement which would also facilitate CPFR. So the company does not have to make substantial investments in software and technology. Moye feels that managing the change in terms of selling the supply chain ideas to corporate management and culture in the company has been challenging but it was not difficult as the lady chief information officer ( CIO) got all the supply chain products approved. The company,however, planned to have a matrix organization rather than a functional silo organization , which is unresponsive to today’s business environment.Campbell soup company, makes products that are prices sensitive.An important competitive priorityof the company is low cost operations, which extend to the entire supply chain. Campbell operates in an environment with a high degree of certainty . Only five percent of its products are new each year, the rest have been on the market for years, making forecasting of demand easeier. Even though Campbell already had high level customer service-98 percent of the time. Campbell’s products were available in retail inventories-management

believed that improvements in costs were possible . It scrutinized the entire supply chain to determine where performance could be improved. The outcome was a program called continuous replenishment which reduced the inventories of retailers from an average of 4 weeks supply to 2 weeks supply.This reduction amounts to saving of the order of 1 percent of retail sales. As the average retailer’s profits are only 2 percent of the sales, the result was a 50 percent increase in the average retailer’s profits Because of that increase in profitability, retailers purchased a border line of Campbell products, thereby increasing Campbell saels.The program works in the following way. Each morning Campbell uses EDI link with the retailers.Retailers inform the Campbell of demands for Campbell products and the current inventory levels on their distribution centres determine which products need replenishment based on the upper and lower inventory limits established with each retailer. Campbell makes daily deliveries of the needed products. Campbell ‘s environment has a low level of uncertainty , so the company pursued and efficient supply chain design. The implication,however , that it must avoid actions that would disrupt the supply chain. For example retailers on the continuous replenishment program had to forgo forward buying whereby retailers in the industry often buy excess stock at discounted prices so that they can offer price promotions. Forward buying causes ripples in the supply chain, increasing everybody costs. That was the case with chicken soup. Campbell would offer deep discounts once a year and retailers would take advantage of them, sometimes buying an entire’s year supply. Because of the change in demand, the chicken bonning plant would have to go on overtime. When that happened, costs in the entire supply chain increased Campbell's production costs increased and retailers had to pay for warehousing large stocks of chicken soup. With the continuous replenishment system, those extra costs are eliminated and everyone wins.

Question: 

On the basis of the information given in the case study, comment on the supply chain management initiatives taken by Campbell Soup Company, anticipate some of the supply chain challenges that the company can face in the future, and provide relevant recommendations to the company.

Please write the answer in your own words

You should add authentic references from academic or professional sources.

Your answer should be between 450 and 480 words.