Guest Rodger King Sleep Country Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Q1-Share what you found most interesting in the presentation?

There were many key functions discussed during the session such as companies’
achievements, supply chain processes, Retail formats, operations, purchase processes
flow, Inventory management, receiving process, picking process, reverse logistics,
home delivery processes, e-commerce flows, customer services flow, etc. However,
the most interesting to me was the continuous improvement slide wherein the guests
discussed “unleased potential”. Monthly and annual CI audits process and how CI is
the formal process to improve efficiency and best practices. I really liked the passion
both Rodger and David had about their team and its internal coordination between
five cross-functional teams. 100 nights guarantee shows how much they focused on
customer service, fulfilling 200 orders daily from e-commerce shows strong supply
chain function, the sustainability program run by Sleep Country called “Green”. It is
very fascinating to learn how a company takes care of returned products and re-cycles
them to make them new out of it. Also, contributing by donating 7,000 units last year
shows sheer dedication towards society. It was interesting to learn how they take care
of their industry partners, and their approach is to grow together and not cut costs just
to make their profits. Learning about their products, especially compressed foam
technology that how it is easy to move around with vacuum packing. The Interesting
use of technology for delivering products is great where we discussed about Omni-
track integration. What I learned from this session is how your relationship with your
partners can ensure the quality of products and services the company is providing in
the market in line with its goals and mission.
Q2-How were the topics related to the lessons you have already learned in the
program?
The topics delivered in the session were very much related to what we have learned in
the semester, most of the topics such as Supplier relations, involvement of freight
forwarders, and thirst party logistic companies were available examples in Purchasing
and supplier management course. We have learned about reverse logistics in
distribution function and how much it is important for companies these days to plan
how to manage inventory that is coming back to DC. Other important DC functions
discussed in the session such as receiving, picking, put-away, and inventory
movement we have earlier reviewed in Distribution with Prof. Natalie. Topics related
to inventory management with cycle counts, full scanning, annual audits,
reconciliation are discussed in supply and demand with prof. Larry during the
inventory accuracy session. Rodger also discussed purchasing process flow where
topics such as forecasting demand, data on SKU’s performance, communication
between functional department, order to cash process, and vendor partnership were
also discussed in Business process class with Prof. Beverly. Continuation
improvement or sleep country “Unleashed Potential” we are currently learning in
S&D 2 with prof. John wherein he has discussed Kaizen used in many Japanese
organizations. I would like to share my recommendation to sleep-country that their
DC was not looking very safe as the floor was full of empty skids and the product was
leaning towards the wall. We have learned in distribution about “how much safety is
important” for every business.