A convenience store supply chain can improve responsiveness in the following ways:

Local capacity: The store can provide local cooking capacity at stores and arrange foods immediately

Local Inventory: This includes keeping stock at the store readily available always.

Wide use of information technology: Helps to predict demand with proper accuracy and reduce
costs related to inventory.

As this leads to increased responsiveness, the store is also at a risk of increased uncertainty. Some
risks involved in each case are:

If local inventory is implemented then it may lead to obsolete inventory and will require extra space

In case of IT, fixed cost for the systems is high and operations may go nonfunctional if there is
network failure

In cross-docking, the risk involved may be of vehicle breakdown or the risk of any natural calamity
occurring

Micro-matching supply and demand using rapid replenishment assumes that the same daily demand
pattern will be repeated in each store.

Some risks associated with this are:

Risk of delay in replenishment: There is a possibility that some unexpected customers come to the
store and buy products which may lead to stock out. This will cause difficulty for the regular
customers which visit the store on a daily basis

Risk of delay in transportation: There may arise a situation where the service levels will be low due
to disruptions in the traffic flow which may lead to late deliveries of items to the store and also
increased transportation costs

Over dependency on information systems: Seven-Eleven is highly reliant on its information systems
and its supply chain is harmonized with the demand because of this system. In case there is a failure
of a system, it will result in a massive breakdown

If any tragedy occurs from the supplier’s end then that would result in stock out situation due to the
absence of inventory in the supply chain