Interesting story
I’ve always seen it as hypocritical that our suppliers want to end each month without any inventory in their own warehouses, but they are fine with dealers being jammed up with excess stock. All they have done is to move the majority of the risk of running a business onto the backs of their dealers.
The Lean and Six-Sigma folks should probably have a seat at the table, but they shouldn’t be running the meetings. With a global supply chain, there are too many places where one failure can disrupt the entire business model. Better to have a little stock in the warehouse to buffer those issues, to make sure that production doesn’t stop every time there is a delay.
We’ve still got a long way to go before we near the end of the current pandemic, and this won’t be the last one we have to deal with. The difference between business partners and vendors will be easy to see. Business partners will be the ones who are willing to shoulder some of the risk along with their dealers. We shall soon see the OEMs who have a long term vision of the industry, versus those who only care about the price of their stock.
#RV #PowerSport #Marine #Inventory #InventoryManagement #Risk