Starbucks Supply Chain Management Case Study

Starbucks Coffee, located in Seattle, USA, is the largest coffee producer and retailer in North America, with sales growing at more than 60% for eight consecutive years. Its retail stores have grown from 11 in 1987 to 2000, with more than 4 million customers a week and branches in major cities around the world.

Starbucks's supply chain should support three channels: special channels, direct sales channels and retail channels. Special channels serve airlines and other retail stores, direct sales channels handle mail order business, and retail channels serve their own stores and joint venture stores. Starbucks adopts a centralized supply chain operation mode to support three channels at the same time.

Case question:

(1) A brief description of supply chain management.

(2) briefly describe the application mode of supply chain. Which kind does Starbucks belong to?

Answer:

The main results are as follows: (1) supply chain is the process of products from production to delivery to customers. from the point of view of structure, supply chain refers to the complex relationship network established between enterprises and business partners for procurement, production and delivery. Supply chain management is to coordinate the logistics, information flow and capital flow among all participating companies in the supply chain:

a. Logistics is the circulation of goods from suppliers to customers and returns in the opposite direction in the supply chain.

b. Information flow includes demand forecast, order delivery and delivery report

c. Capital flow includes credit card information, credit term, settlement period and so on.

(2) there are three modes:

a. Production mode according to inventory

b. Continuous replenishment mode

c. Make-to-order mode.

Starbucks belongs to the first mode.