3. As one of Barilla's customers, what would your response to JITD be? Why?

For Supermarket chain’s own distribution organization (GD): Conditional Yes

GD will prefer to have more autonomy on selecting what product to order and in what quantity.
GDs have their own sophisticated system of forecasting and systems in place to order
optimally. The company having the knowledge of overall market, solely focuses on forecasts
of barilla products. Whereas for GDs, Barilla products are just few of SKUs compared to the
total SKUs they maintain. Considering the benefits of both the inhouse forecasting and JITD
option, GDs can rethink about their order decision only when there is large difference in the
forecasts (Distributer forecast and Barilla forecast). JITD will be useful for confirming the
already done forecasts by Supermarket chain’s own distribution organization (GD).
For Distributors for independent supermarkets (DO): Yes
DOs cannot forecast the demand accurately as they don’t have the actual data of all the
independent supermarkets. DOs don’t have their own system to track the inventory levels at
independent supermarkets and may face many stockout situations. So, JITD is preferred by the
distributors of independent super markets (DO)

4. In the environment in which Barilla operated in 1990, do you believe JITD (or a similar kind
of program) would be feasible? effective? If so, which customers would you target next? How
would you convince them that JITD program was worth trying? If not, what alternatives would
you suggest to combat some of the difficulties that Barilla's operating system faces?

It is feasible to implement the JITD program. Since the data is being sent by the distributors
on daily basis for previous day sale, there is no requirement for real-time data collection. Thus,
it is easy to collect the data from the distributors. Forecasting model can be developed over a
period of time by correcting the errors calculated over the period of time.
We can target the customers who look for SKU expansion but facing space constraints in the
warehouse to maintain inventory. Also, distributors who look for incentives from Barilla for
implementing the JITD system. The incentives can be provided as a result of reduction in
manufacturing costs.