Barilla
Barilla
Barilla
Barilla SpA is the worlds largest pasta manufacturer The company sells to a wide range of Italian retailers, primarily through third party distributors During the late 1980s, Barilla suffered increasing operational inefficiencies and cost penalties that resulted from large week-to-week variations in its distributors order patterns
Exhibit 12 Weekly Demand for Barilla Dry Products from Corteses Northeast Distribution Center to the Pedrignano CDC, 1989.
Questions:
What exactly is causing the distributors order pattern to look this way? What are the underlying drivers of the fluctuations?
Demand Fluctuations
The extreme fluctuation is truly remarkable when one considers the underlying aggregate demand for pasta in Italy. What does the underlying consumer demand pattern for pasta look like in Italy?
underlying pasta demand pattern in Italy is relatively flat. The pasta demand pattern at the distribution centers (DCs) shows a rather large fluctuation. This appears to be because of the channel policies and dynamics.
Demand Fluctuations
What is the impact of demand fluctuation? Because the plant has high product change over costs, Barilla has either inefficient production or excess finished goods inventory Utilization of central distribution is low
What are the differences and similarities between the Barilla channel and the beer distribution channel?
Workers Equipment
The distributor must build excess capacity to hold goods bought on any type of promotion, including quantity discounts, truckload discounts and canvass period discounts
What if the distributor passes the discount along to the retailers? What is the value of the promotion game?
Eliminate some of the false economics that drive traditional ordering processes
What does this mean?
Implementation Issues
External conflicts (the Distributors Perspective) Q: Why are Barillas customers so resistant to the JITD? Q: Why should the customers accept JITD? Q: How might Maggiali be more successful in persuading customers to at least try the JITD program?
Implementation Issues
Internal Conflicts (the Sales Perspective) Q: Why is there so much internal resistance to what seems, in concept, to be an effective idea for Barilla? Q: What are these salespeople REALLY saying?
Demonstrate that JITD benefits the distributors (lowering inventory, improving their service levels and increasing their returns on assets); Run experiment at one or more of Barillas 18 depots Clearly, the implementation issues are much broader than just a logistics program. Maggiali needs to view it as a company-wide effort and get top management closely involved in this. Trust needs to be developed and conditions created for people to change