ESSAY: For this discussion, your groups will review the chart and answer the prompts related to the following scenarios:

For this discussion, your groups will review the chart and answer the prompts related to the following scenarios:

Scenario 1

Your deliveries to retail stores have not been on time lately, and neither have the departures of loaded trucks from your distribution centers. Load times are well within standards, but the trucks are just not getting on the road on time.

Additionally, while you have plenty of space in the warehouse, much of the inventory has been sitting there for much longer than you anticipated and seems to be gathering dust on the shelves.

Your vehicle fleet is reaching the end of its economic life span , and routine preventive maintenance is just barely staying ahead of repairs.

• What do you believe are the root causes for late deliveries? How would you adjust operations to improve this?
• How does the inventory situation in the warehouse contribute to the issue of late deliveries?

Scenario 2

In this final scenario, it appears that the warehouse is routinely past inventory capacity, and product age and overall cycle time are increasing. Your vehicle fleet is just past its prime; however, it is holding together well due to a robust and thorough preventive-maintenance program. You are just barely meeting your delivery schedules, and trucks are often late when leaving the warehouse. It seems that, once they are at the warehouse, they wait for an excessive amount of time before being loaded and hitting the road again.

• What is the root cause behind the reduced number of on-time deliveries?
• How can a warehouse management system (WMS) affect the delivery performance of a supply chain?