Toyota Supply Chain Ideas for Big Box Stores

Teaching the Big Box New Tricks - What Toyota knows about supply chains - and how to apply it to almost anything, even megastores - from Fortune.

At the RDC, cola is now received directly from the supplier's bottling plant in wheeled dollies. They are rolled directly from the supplier into the delivery truck to the stores. And once at the stores, the dollies are rolled directly to the point of sale, where they take the place of the usual sales racks. This innovation eliminates several "touches," in which employees moved cola from large pallets to roll cages, to the stores, and then onto dollies to reach the shelves, where they were handled one last time. (In drawing their provision-stream maps of the original process, Tesco discovered that half its cost in operating this provision stream was the labor required to fill the shelves in the store.)

Based on material from Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Together, by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones.

Articles by James Womack