Company C VMI Inventory Management Research

Fast fashion,as a new form of retail industry,started from the western country in the 1970 s,and gradually grew stronger around the 1990 s.After the millennium,several big international fast fashion brands like ZARA from Spain,H&M from Sweden,GAP from the United States,and UNIQLO from Japan,entered into China market one by one.At this time,domestic fast fashion brands are also facing a great development timing.Company C is a local Singapore company established and grew up during this period,which mainly focus on shoes and bags product for young women,and its main customer is young and fashionable urban women between 18-35 years old.Its early product strategy is to aiming several big international fast fashion brands,expecting to provide customer with the trendiest,the best quality,but the most cost-effective daily shoes and bags,through business model of "fast,accurate,resolute".Around 2010,Company C expanded its business to domestic market.At this time,it soon encountered a lot of challenges of localization,because of its business model in Southeast Asia for a long period.Facing the climate difference of four seasons,its product design also needs to make rapid response and adjustment,and the product shelf life of each quarter becomes very sensitive.No matter the shelf life is long or short,it will cause inventory management problem of "out of stock" or "overstock".Besides,if the products miss the peak sales season or trendy period,it will become off-season stock,and increase huge inventory risk after quarter and quarter.At the same time,many factories cooperated with Company C for a long time also face many problems.Frequent problems in the process of procurement and production line happened,because they cannot adapt to such huge and rapid changes of market demand in a short time.Also,due to order increased lot and huge changes of product design caused by four season exchange,the procurement of raw materials becomes more difficult and longer,which leads to longer inventory process of raw material.Moreover,the factory often cant deliver on time by the requirement of company C,even more severe issue happened like batch delivery without reason,quantity shortage,and quality defect.In addition,due to long cooperation and deep relationship between the two sides,their staff are difficult to cope with problem according to relevant rules and regulations,which causes kinds of cooperation problems.For example,slow working process,or problem cant be solved after long time,whats worse,frequently neglect problem caused by shortage of stimulation and punishment rules.The serious problems in the process of inventory management,and shortage of assessment,are very unhealthy to both sides cooperation and business.For solving inventory management problem of both sides,this paper starts its research from development and characteristics of fast fashion industry,development history and business feature of company C.Meanwhile,considering related theory of inventory management,like VMI inventory management method,it finds out main problem and reason of its inventory management,namely "high overstock risk","long process of inventory flow","lack of inventory coordination mechanism" and "lack of inventory assessment mechanism".After that,focusing on these primary problems,it provides solution of "integrated VMI inventory management method".Meanwhile,combining with real case and data of company C,it conducts research of theory,practice,effect verification and guaranty mechanism,for figuring out how to implement integrated VMI inventory management method.Thus,from two aspects of theory and practice,it definitely proves that the four major problems of inventory management of company C,can be solved by the method of integrated VMI inventory management.However,due to objective limitation factors of geography and responsibility,the research cant further study and execute from whole page of supply chain.That is the future expectation of this research,hoping to go on enhancing information system,business intelligence,for accomplishing worldwide integrated supply chain in company C.