Chapter 9 case study - Limited Brands Inc

2. Describe the supply chain management problems encountered by Limited Brands in this case. What was their business impact?
The supply chain management became unwieldy and ineffective due to lack of attention of the supply chain throughout the growth spurt. As a result, Limited Brands found themselves being pushed out of the locations by the discount retailers who were able to better compete for the prime locations. Ineffective supply chain management caused slower response to market changes that negatively impacted retail operations. For a trendy store like The Limited, this is delay is a significant issue and may force the store into chasing trends rather than setting them. Trendsetting is critical to a higher end retailer to keep margins higher.

3. What management, organization, and technology factors were responsible for these problems?

Limited brands had 2 major problems in their supply chain however both were caused by the fast rate of growth that the company had experienced. This problem was more complex because of the way that this growth occurred. The mixture of pure growth and strategic acquisitions made supply chain growth a challenge to manage. The first problem is that there was a lack of management attention and resources that were paid to the supply chain during this phase of rapid growth. It seemed the management was so focused on growth through acquisitions that they did not pay enough attention to the integration of the acquired companies into the Limited Brands family. This is what caused major problem number two. Trying to merge, marry, and manage multiple software and hardware configurations without resources or guidance from leadership a nightmare for the information technology infrastructure and employees as they tried to make it all work with limited resources and no corporate guidance.

4. How did Limited Brands solve these problems? What management, organization, and technology issues were addressed by the solution.

Limited Brands finally addressed this after a catastrophic day on the loading docks pointed out a significant weakness in their supply chain operations. Non-coordination between supply chain information resulted in 400 truck showing up trying to unload cargo at a facility that could only handle 38% of the trucks. Following this fiasco, Limited Brands management purchased consulting services to integrate the 60 or so varied supply management configurations that had accumulated over the years due to acquisitions. Not only was the consultant tasked with integrating these processes, they were tasked with creating scaleable software to allow integration and growth by both future organic growth and future acquisitions. In addition, Limited Brands formed a wholly owned subsidiary tasked with maintaining the logistics and supply chain management for the stores.