Abercrombie & Fitch improves global supply chain with Management Dynamics

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Abercrombie & Fitch improves global supply chain with Management Dynamics.

Management Dynamics, a leading provider of Global Trade Management solutions, has announced that Abercrombie & Fitch Co., a specialty retailer of casual apparel for men, women, and kids, implemented its Supply Chain Visibility solution to provide real-time visibility into the status of orders, shipments and in-transit inventory.

The global, multimode visibility solution will allow its logistics team to streamline its supply chain process from vendor to distribution centre and collaborate with merchants and service providers to reduce costs, shipment delays and improve customer service.

Abercrombie & Fitch selected Management Dynamics for its industry experience in delivering supply chain visibility solutions as well as its advanced data quality management capabilities.  With 30 trading partners and multiple international business units, Abercrombie & Fitchs logistics team needed a single, detailed level view of shipments and orders in-transit to track, manage exceptions, proactively pinpoint in-transit delays and respond to any potential logistics crisis.  Integrating with its Oracle Retail Merchandising System, Management Dynamics Supply Chin Visibility solution allows merchants to monitor the delivery status of key orders and for the logistics team to proactively manage inbound shipments by milestones.  And, with accurate shipment information earlier in the supply chain, Abercrombie & Fitch is able to improve store-level inventory allocations to reduce cycle time and achieve higher levels of availability.

We needed to create reliability in our global supply chain with the ability respond to actual and potential issues and tightly collaborate with our merchants, distribution centers and service providers, said Lois Davis, Vice President Global Trade & Transportation, Abercrombie & Fitch.  We chose Management Dynamics for their supply chain experience, ability to ensure data quality and problem resolution focused approach. Their hosted solution saves valuable time and effort, provides meaningful cost reductions, optimises our shipping options, and improves our customer service.

Management Dynamics Supply Chain Visibility solution supports the key requirements of the logistics operations at Abercrombie & Fitch including:

One central location for tracking critical shipment information across multiple sources, providing visibility to inventory in-transit and speeding the flow of goods from distribution to merchants

Advance notice of shipment information to improve cross-border logistics decisions

Proprietary Data Quality Management (DQM) technologies and business methodologies to ensure best-in-class information accuracy, completeness and timeliness for all messages exchanged between trading partners 

Event alerting capabilities that anticipate potential inventory receipt and fulfilment issues and prompt rapid resolution before they impact availability

Robust functionality for measuring, analysing and improving the performance of suppliers, carriers and service providers with user-defined reports, scorecards and KPIs based on frontline data

In high fashion with ever-changing seasons and consumer tastes by region, it is critical for specialty retailers to tightly manage the inbound supply chain from vendor to distribution centre and ultimately to improve store-level fulfilment metrics, said Jim Preuninger, CEO of Management Dynamics.  Abercrombie & Fitch understands the importance of building a strong infrastructure to support collaborative logistics processes and selected our Supply Chain Visibility solution based on a track record of delivery in this area. We look forward to helping this leading apparel retailer to establish transparency across its global supply chain and realise their operational objectives.