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Read the case study below and answer ALL the questions that follow.

South African retail giant, The Foschini Retail Group, improves flow of goods.

The need for speed.

The Foschini Retail Group $($IFG$),$ one of South Africa's leading fashion and lifestyle retail chains, consists of $14$ trading formats dealing in products that range from fashion, jewelry, cosmetics$,$ sporting and outdoor apparel and equipment to homewares. The group, which was formed in $1925$ by George Rosenthal, a Russian immigrant, trades in over $1,650$ stores, making it the foremost specialty retailer in South Africa.

Today the business employs in excess of $15,000$ staff and processes more than $40$ milion units of stock per year across its six distribution centres. The company has enjoyed a period of steady growth and the existing legacy system was struggling to cope with the sharp peaks in customer demand and the need to adapt to change in a short space of time. For example, each time an adjustment was made to a warehouse process, the existing system would require program development which could take several months.

It can be easy to identify areas where you can make improvements in a DC environment, but if those changes take months to implement then you are losing out," explained Jan Tukker, group logistics director, TFG$."$We needed to upgrade to a system that offered us much more flexibility and could provide a template for a quick, effective roll$-$out across the remaining divisions."

Learning from Industry leaders

TFG$\text{'}$s supply chain team realised that it had built systems and processes that enabled it to operate extremely efficiently. The challenge was that this efficiency didn't fully incorporate the dynamic needs of the trading divisions that it serviced and was related to one static way of operating. The approach taken was to gather as much information as possible and learn from best in class companies. "Rather than fight against the tide, we wanted to understand why our peers operated in a certain manner and how this made them leaders in their industry" explained Jan Tukker. "After all they must be operating in a certain manner and achieving the success that they have for a reason.

Based on this we realised that one of the key components needed to improve our flexibility and capability was a leading Warehouse Management System".

Due Diligence

TFG conducted a thorough review of the market and short$-$listed three suppliers for consideration. Manhattan and Supply Chain Junction, a specialist supply chain consultancy focusing on the South African market, proved to be best in class and beat off the competition. "Manhattan's retail and domain expertise made it an obvious choice for us$,"$ Jan Tukker explains. "The company is not only ranked highly by independent analysts, but has high calibre customer testimonies that gave us the proof we needed. We wanted a parther that we could leam from, and we also appreciated the opportunity to interact with similar businesses to share experiences. We choose Supply Chain Junction as our local partner as they had previously successfully implemented Manhattan's WMS in South Africa. They had a team of local industry experts encompassing not only the software e$)($pertise but strong business process knowledge which enabled us to significantly reduce our implementation cost and flexibility as a result of a local rate structure and resource availability". The implementation at the first site was completed within $12$ months, the team have however, produced a system template which can easily be dropped into the remaining sites. The second site was live after just two months with the remaining $3$ DCs due for completing during $2011.$ "The joint collaboration of The Foschini Group, Manhattan and Supply Chain Junction cannot be faulted," commented Jan Tukker. "The warehouse management system was delivered on time and under budget thanks to the commitment of the team. We have just completed the implementation at highest volume DC

implementation at the first site was completed within $12$ months, the team have however, produced a system template which can easily be dropped into the remaining sites. The second site was live after just two months with the remaining $3$ DCs due for completing during $2011.$ The joint collaboration of The Foschini Group, Manhattan and Supply Chain Junction cannot be faulted," commented Jan Tukker. "The warehouse management system was delivered on time and under budget thanks to the commitment of the team. We have just completed the implementation at highest volume DC

$1$

which accounts for approximately $40\%$ of the group's revenue. This was our third go live and during this implementation we also upgraded to the latest version of the software. On the day we went live we shipped just under our full plan and within $2$ days we were shipping in excess of our store distribution plan."

The Benefits

$"$We have met one of our main objectives in that we have designed a