The paper was presented at the Polish Logistics Congress Logistics 2008 – “New challenges – new solutions”, Poznań, May 7-9, 2008.
The FMCG sector faces a particularly difficult task every day: ensuring the constant availability of thousands of consumer products to meet current needs under conditions of random demand, which is characterized by high volatility and sensitivity to many diverse factors. The innovation triggered in this sector by the need to cope with conditions imposed by the market and the competitive environment means that the solutions it develops, including those in the sphere of logistics, are transferred to other sectors and industries as good practices and benchmarks. Despite this leadership, FMCG companies have growing problems with meeting demand, the main causes of which, apart from its nature, are: mass sales and the multitude and diversity of trade links within often extensive supply chains forming complex economic network structures. ECR – Efficient Consumer Response – provides organizational, informational, and technological solutions that, based on the integration of activities and the development of partnerships in trade cooperation, can counteract problems and unleash value that is a source of profitability and customer satisfaction. The ten-year track record of ECR in Poland provides sufficient examples showing what is worth doing and what must be done to operate effectively, but it also shows how much remains to be done both within operations and processes that have been carried out for years and in areas of activity that new market challenges force companies to address.
Introduction
The supply chain is the basic form of economic network configuration used to meet the demand for products and services. Hence, issues of flow coordination and all problems related to the functioning of the logistics sphere should be perceived and considered from its perspective. This goal is served not only by the concept of supply chain management known for years, but also, and perhaps above all, by understanding the nature of the flow of goods and information in logistics as a process that, if it has problems anywhere, will reveal them in the way it reacts to demand and responds to it in terms of time, cost, and quality. Market confrontation based on competition should eliminate inefficient behavior. Fortunately for outsiders, this is not the case, because the supply chain, as a simple and transparent structure, is in reality entangled in a network of interdependencies resulting from the network nature of the flow, whose “infrastructure” is not a chain, but a supply network. It is difficult to manage, and even more so to coordinate, due to the fact that companies cooperate with many suppliers and recipients simultaneously in many supply chains with different market orientations and using different strategies and organizational and technical solutions. Thus, the supply chain cannot be isolated from its environment, and consequently, it is difficult to manage.
However, this is not impossible. Although access to knowledge and best practices is much easier than it was a dozen or so years ago due to the globalization of trade and the internationalization of economic cooperation, there are still significant reserves in supply chain management. Searching for them is necessary, and releasing them is possible. Based on supply chain management, it is possible to build a real competitive advantage, and integrating activities usually costs less than investments in inventory, promotion, or product marketing. It certainly brings much greater and, more importantly, more lasting effects.
The Polish FMCG sector consists of 1.18 million enterprises, which accounts for 32.8% of all enterprises operating in Poland. It is also a very innovative sector in terms of using AIDC techniques, communication solutions, and information technologies, while at the same time having great leverage in terms of their implementation. It should therefore be expected that it will be similarly oriented towards efficient supply chain management. However, this is not the case.
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