Supply chain in Subway

INTRODUCTION
Fierce competition in todays global markets, the introduction of products with shorter life cycles, and the heightened expectations of customers have forced business enterprises to invest in, and focus attention on, their supply chains. This, together with continuing advances in communications and transportation technologies (e.g., mobile

communication, Internet, and overnight delivery), has motivated the continuous evolution of the supply chain and of the techniques to manage it effectively. In a typical supply chain, raw materials are procured and items are produced at one or more factories, shipped to warehouses for intermediate storage, and then shipped to retailers or customers. Consequently, to reduce cost and improve service levels, effective supply chain strategies must take into account the interactions at the various levels in the supply chain. The supply chain, which is also referred to as the logistics network, consists of suppliers, manufacturing centers, warehouses, distribution centers, and retail outlets, as well as raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and nished products that ow between the facilities.

WHAT IS SCM?
If your company makes a product from parts purchased from suppliers, and those products are sold to customers, then you have a supply chain. Some supply chains are simple, while others are rather complicated. The complexity of the supply chain will vary
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with the size of the business and the intricacy and numbers of items that are manufactured. Elements of the Supply Chain A simple supply chain is made up of several elements that are linked by the movement of products along it. The supply chain starts and ends with the customer.

Customer: The customer starts the chain of events when they decide to purchase a product that has been offered for sale by a company. The customer contacts the sales department of the company, which enters the sales order for a specific quantity to be delivered on a specific date. If the product has to be manufactured, the sales order will include a requirement that needs to be fulfilled by the production facility.

Planning: The requirement triggered by the customers sales order will be combined with other orders. The planning department will create a production plan to produce the products to fulfill the customers orders. To manufacture the products the company will then have to purchase the raw materials needed.

Purchasing: The purchasing department receives a list of raw materials and services required by the production department to complete the customers orders. The purchasing department sends purchase orders to selected suppliers to deliver the necessary raw materials to the manufacturing site on the required date.

Inventory: The raw materials are received from the suppliers, checked for quality and accuracy and moved into the warehouse. The supplier will then send an invoice to the company for the items they delivered. The raw materials are stored until they are required by the production department.

Production: Based on a production plan, the raw materials are moved inventory to the production area. The finished products ordered by the customer are manufactured

using the raw materials purchased from suppliers. After the items have been completed and tested, they are stored back in the warehouse prior to delivery to the customer.

Transportation: When the finished product arrives in the warehouse, the shipping department determines the most efficient method to ship the products so that they are delivered on or before the date specified by the customer. When the goods are received by the customer, the company will send an invoice for the delivered products.

BULLWHIP EFFECT IN SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

The bullwhip effect occurs when the demand order variabilities in the supply chain are amplified as they moved up the supply chain. Distorted information from one end of a
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supply chain to the other can lead to tremendous inefficiencies. Companies can effectively counteract the bullwhip effect by thoroughly understanding its underlying causes. Industry leaders are implementing innovative strategies that pose new challenges: 1. integrating new information systems, 2. defining new organizational relationships, and 3. implementing new incentive and measurement systems.

Distorted information from one end of a supply chain to the other can lead to tremendous inefficiencies: excessive inventory investment, poor customer service, lost revenues, misguided capacity plans, inactive transportation, and missed production schedules. How do exaggerated order swings occur? What can companies do to mitigate them? Not long ago, logistics executives at Procter & Gamble (P&G) examined the order patterns for one of their best-selling products, Pampers. Its sales at retail stores were fluctuating, but the variabilities were certainly not excessive. However, as they examined the distributors' orders, the executives were surprised by the degree of variability. When they looked at P&G's orders of materials to their suppliers, such as 3M, they discovered that the swings were even greater. At first glance, the variabilities did not make sense. While the consumers, in this case, the babies, consumed diapers at a steady rate, the demand order variabilities in the supply chain were amplified as they moved up the supply chain. P&G called this phenomenon the "bullwhip" effect. (In some industries, it is known as the "whiplash" or the "whipsaw" effect.)

When Hewlett-Packard (HP) executives examined the sales of one of its printers at a major reseller, they found that there were, as expected, some fluctuations over time. However, when they examined the orders from the reseller, they observed much bigger swings. Also, to their surprise, they discovered that the orders from the printer division to the company's integrated circuit division had even greater fluctuations. What happens when a supply chain is plagued with a bullwhip effect that distorts its demand information as it is transmitted up the chain? In the past, without being able to see the sales of its products at the distribution channel stage, HP had to rely on the sales orders from the resellers to make product forecasts, plan capacity, control inventory, and schedule production. Big variations in demand were a major problem for HP's management. The common symptoms of such variations could be excessive inventory, poor product forecasts, insufficient or excessive capacities, poor customer service due to unavailable products or long backlogs, uncertain production planning (i.e., excessive revisions), and high costs for corrections, such as for expedited shipments and overtime. HP's product division was a victim of order swings that were exaggerated by the resellers relative to their sales; it, in turn, created additional exaggerations of order swings to supplier

CAUSES OF BULLWHIP EFFECTS

Perhaps the best illustration of the bullwhip effect is the well-known "beer game." In the game, participants (students, managers, analysts, and so on) play the roles of customers, retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers of a popular brand of beer. The participants cannot communicate with each other and must make order decisions based only on orders from the next downstream player. The ordering patterns share a common, recurring theme: the variabilities of an upstream site are always greater than those of the downstream site, a simple, yet powerful illustration of the bullwhip effect. This amplified order variability may be attributed to the players' irrational decision making. Indeed, Sterman's experiments showed that human behavior, such as misconceptions about inventory and demand information, may cause the bullwhip effect. In contrast, we show that the bullwhip effect is a consequence of the players' rational behavior within the supply chain's infrastructure. This important distinction implies that companies wanting to control the bullwhip effect have to focus on modifying the chain's infrastructure and related processes rather than the decision makers' behavior. We have identified four major causes of the bullwhip effect: 1. Demand forecast updating 2. Order batching 3. Price fluctuation 4. Rationing and shortage gaming

Each of the four forces in concert with the chain's infrastructure and the order managers' rational decision making create the bullwhip effect. Understanding the causes helps managers design and develop strategies to counter it. Demand Forecast Updating Every company in a supply chain usually does product forecasting for its production scheduling, capacity planning, inventory control, and material requirements planning. Forecasting is often based on the order history from the company's immediate customers. The outcomes of the beer game are the consequence of many behavioral factors, such as the players' perceptions and mistrust. An important factor is each player's thought process in projecting the demand pattern based on what he or she observes. When a downstream operation places an order, the upstream manager processes that piece of information as a signal about future product demand. Based on this signal, the upstream manager readjusts his or her demand forecasts and, in turn, the orders placed with the suppliers of the upstream operation. We contend that demand signal processing is a major contributor to the bullwhip effect. For example, if you are a manager who has to determine how much to order from a supplier, you use a simple method to do demand forecasting, such as exponential smoothing. With exponential smoothing, future demands are continuously updated as the new daily demand data become available. The order you send to the supplier reflects the amount you need to replenish the stocks to meet the requirements of future demands, as well as the necessary safety stocks. The future demands and the associated safety stocks are updated using the smoothing technique. With long lead times, it is not uncommon to

have weeks of safety stocks. The result is that the fluctuations in the order quantities over time can be much greater than those in the demand data. Now, one site up the supply chain, if you are the manager of the supplier, the daily orders from the manager of the previous site constitute your demand. If you are also using exponential smoothing to update your forecasts and safety stocks, the orders that you place with your supplier will have even bigger swings. For an example of such fluctuations in demand, see Figure 2. As we can see from the figure, the orders placed by the dealer to the manufacturer have much greater variability than the. consumer demands. Because the amount of safety stock contributes to the bullwhip effect, it is intuitive that, when the lead times between the resupply of the items along the supply chain are longer, the fluctuation is even more significant. Order Batching In a supply chain, each company places orders with an upstream organization using some inventory monitoring or control. Demands come in, depleting inventory, but the

company may not immediately place an order with its supplier. It often batches or accumulates demands before issuing an order. There are two forms of order batching: periodic ordering and push ordering. Instead of ordering frequently, companies may order weekly, biweekly, or even monthly. There are many common reasons for an inventory system based on order cycles. Often the supplier cannot handle frequent order processing because the time and cost of processing an order can be substantial. P&G estimated that, because of the many manual interventions needed in its order, billing, and shipment systems, each invoice to its customers cost between $35 and $75 to process.' Many

manufacturers place purchase orders with suppliers when they run their material requirements planning (MRP) systems. MRP systems are often run monthly, resulting in monthly ordering with suppliers. A company with slow-moving items may prefer to order on a regular cyclical basis because there may not be enough items consumed to warrant resupply if it orders more frequently. Consider a company that orders once a month from its supplier. The supplier faces a highly erratic stream of orders. There is a spike in demand at one time during the month, followed by no demands for the rest of the month. Of course, this variability is higher than the demands the company itself faces. Periodic ordering amplifies variability and contributes to the bullwhip effect. One common obstacle for a company that wants to order frequently is the economics of transportation. There are substantial differences between full truckload (FTL) and less-than-truckload rates, so companies have a strong incentive to fill a truckload when they order materials from a supplier. Sometimes, suppliers give their best pricing for FTL orders. For most items, a full truckload could be a supply of a month or more. Full or close to full truckload ordering would thus lead to moderate to excessively long order cycles. In push ordering, a company experiences regular surges in demand. The company has orders "pushed" on it from customers periodically because salespeople are regularly measured, sometimes quarterly or annually, which causes end-of-quarter or end-of-year order surges. Salespersons who need to fill sales quotas may "borrow" ahead and sign orders prematurely. The U.S. Navy's study of recruiter productivity found surges in the

number of recruits by the recruiters on a periodic cycle that coincided with their evaluation cycle. For companies, the ordering pattern from their customers is more erratic than the consumption patterns that their customers experience. The "hockey stick" phenomenon is quite prevalent. When a company faces periodic ordering by its customers, the bullwhip effect results. If all customers' order cycles were spread out evenly throughout the week, the bullwhip effect would be minimal. The periodic surges in demand by some customers would be insignificant because not all would be ordering at the same time. Unfortunately, such an ideal situation rarely exists. Orders are more likely to be randomly spread out or, worse, to overlap. When order cycles overlap, most customers that order periodically do so at the same time. As a result, the surge in demand is even more pronounced, and the variability from the bullwhip effect is at its highest. If the majority of companies that do MRP or distribution requirement planning (DRP) to generate purchase orders do so at the beginning of the month (or end of the month), order cycles overlap. Periodic execution of MRPs contributes to the bullwhip effect, or "MRP jitters" or "DRP jitters."

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Price Fluctuation Estimates indicate that 80 percent of the transactions between manufacturers and distributors in the grocery industry were made in a "forward buy" arrangement in which items were bought in advance of requirements, usually because of a manufacturer's attractive price offer. Forward buying constitutes $75 billion to $100 billion of inventory in the grocery industry. Forward buying results from price fluctuations in the marketplace. Manufacturers and distributors periodically have special promotions like price discounts, quantity discounts, coupons, rebates, and so on. All these promotions result in price fluctuations. Additionally, manufacturers offer trade deals (e.g., special discounts, price terms, and payment terms) to the distributors and wholesalers, which are an indirect form of price discounts. For example, Kotler reports that trade deals and consumer promotion constitute 47 percent and 28 percent, respectively, of their total promotion budgets. The result is that customers buy in quantities that do not reflect their immediate needs; they buy in bigger quantities and stock up for the future. Such promotions can be costly to the supply chain. What happens if forward buying becomes the norm? When a product's price is low (through direct discount or promotional schemes), a customer buys in bigger quantities than needed. When the product's price returns to normal, the customer stops buying until it has depleted its inventory As a result, the customer's buying pattern does not reflect its consumption pattern, and the variation of the buying quantities is much bigger than the variation of the consumption rate - the bullwhip effect.
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When high-low pricing occurs, forward buying may well be a rational decision. If the cost of holding inventory is less than the price differential, buying in advance makes sense. In fact, the high-low pricing phenomenon has induced a stream of research on how companies should order optimally to take advantage of the low price opportunities.

Rationing and Shortage Gaming When product demand exceeds supply, a manufacturer often rations its product to customers. In one scheme, the manufacturer allocates the amount in proportion to the amount ordered. For example, if the total supply is only 50 percent of the total demand, all customers receive 50 percent of what they order. Knowing that the manufacturer will ration when the product is in short supply, customers exaggerate their real needs when they order. Later, when demand cools, orders will suddenly disappear and cancellations pour in. This seeming overreaction by customers anticipating shortages results when organizations and individuals make sound, rational economic decisions and "game" the potential rationing. The effect of "gaming" is that customers' orders give the supplier little information on the product's real demand, a particularly vexing problem for manufacturers in a products early stages. The gaming practice is very common. In the 1980s, on several occasions, the computer industry perceived a shortage of DRAM chips. Orders shot up, not because of an increase in consumption, but because of anticipation.

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Customers place duplicate orders with multiple suppliers and buy from the first one that can deliver, then cancel all other duplicate orders. More recently, Hewlett-Packard could not meet the demand for its LaserJet III printer and rationed the product. Orders surged, but HP managers could not discern whether the orders genuinely reflected real market demands or were simply phantom orders from resellers trying to get better allocation of the product. When HP lifted its constraints on resupply of the LaserJets, many resellers canceled their orders. HP's costs in excess inventory after the allocation period and in unnecessary capacity increases were in the millions of dollars. During the Christmas shopping seasons in 1992 and 1993, Motorola could not meet consumer demand for handsets and cellular phones, forcing many distributors to turn away business. Distributors like AirTouch Communications and the Baby Bells, anticipating the possibility of shortages and acting defensively, drastically over ordered toward the end of 1994. Because of such overzealous ordering by retail distributors, Motorola reported record fourth-quarter earnings in January 1995. Once Wall Street realized that the dealers were swamped with inventory and new orders for phones were not as healthy before, Motorola's stock tumbled almost 10 percent. In October 1994, IBM's new Aptiva personal computer was selling extremely well, leading resellers to speculate that IBM might run out of the product before the Christmas season. According to some analysts, IBM, hampered by an overstock problem the previous year, planned production too

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conservatively. Other analysts referred to the possibility of rationing: "Retailers apparently convinced Aptiva will sell well and afraid of being left with insufficient stock to meet holiday season demand --increased their orders with IBM, believing they wouldn't get all they asked for."" It was unclear to IBM how much of the increase in orders was genuine market demand and how much was due to resellers placing phantom orders when IBM had to ration the product.

COMPANY BACKGROUND

Subway is the international famous brands in the world which operates fast food businesses. It has about 35,000 branches in the world and nearly 25,000 opened in the United States. So it causes Subway to become largest enterprise in the American quickserve industry. It persists to provide healthy food, uniform sales standard and open service to consumers that guarantee every customer can get best service in the Subway regardless of where it is. The most important is Subway also focuses on its supply chain management to get benefits. Especially in the last three years, Subway adopted "green" logistics strategy that has cut carbon emissions by 120,000 metric tons and reduced oil emissions by 277,000 barrels annually (Fitzgerald, 2009). Meanwhile, the transportation cost is decreased. This new "green" supply chain strategy has played an important role in Subway's development plan. So how does

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Subway apply this concept to practice? Following words will detailed analysis of Subway's new supply chain management strategy.

History of Subway
The 1999 ad campaign for Doctor's Associates Inc., the franchiser of the Subway chain, proclaims, 'Subway, the way a sandwich should be.' Apparently, millions around the world concur. With more than 14,085 Subway outlets in 73 countries (nearly 12,000 in the United States alone) and in such exotic locations as the Bahamas, Bolivia, Cyprus, Iceland, Paraguay, Russia, and Venezuela, Fred Deluca and Peter Buck's collaboration has become the largest and most successful submarine sandwich franchise in the world. As the second largest international restaurant chain behind McDonald's, Subway touts its menu as a healthy alternative to fast food and has captured a significant share of the market with fresh low-fat sandwiches and several other signature made-to-order subs. Evolution of a Sub Sandwich: 1960s-70s Fred DeLuca was born in Brooklyn in the late 1940s, a time when Harry S. Truman was president, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman had won a Pulitzer Prize for drama, and Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific was a hit on Broadway. Although there were not many ways a kid his age could earn money in the 1950s, DeLuca did--returning twocent bottles found around the neighborhood, in his case, the Bronx housing projects where his family was living. The family moved upstate to Schenectady, and young Fred delivered newspapers, gradually increasing his clientele until his route covered some 400 patrons on Sundays. Originally planning to study premed in college, DeLuca was faced with the daunting challenge of raising tuition money. It was 1965 and DeLuca was 17. Concentrating on his immediate future, he worked in a hardware store, earning little cash ($1.25 per hour) but possessing plenty of ambition. He was looking for another job, something paying more than minimum wage. While attending a summer barbecue, DeLuca struck up a conversation with family friend Dr. Peter Buck. Buck was a nuclear
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physicist, and he talked about a popular sandwich shop near his hometown the community had come to embrace. Buck wondered aloud if DeLuca should open a shop serving submarine sandwiches, a food item gaining considerable popularity. Over the next four hours, the two drew up a business plan; with a $1,000 start-up loan from Buck, the two became partners. DeLuca moved quickly, looking for a location the very next day. On August 25, 1965, Pete's Super Submarines opened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, serving fresh made-to-order sandwiches, with a choice of toppings and condiments, though oddly, without lettuce (it appeared on the menu later). The shop location was not ideal, but was only a short distance from the hardware store where DeLuca had worked. There was little fanfare and few customers, but Buck and DeLuca met regularly in the latter's family home, discussing strategy over homemade pasta. The new enterprise, however, did not stop DeLuca from beginning his freshman year at the University of Bridgeport in September (he later graduated in 1971 with a B.S. in psychology). Juggling his studies and the sandwich shop, weeks turned into months, and the business never soared as each had hoped. Yet rather than give up, they persevered, and instead of abandoning the partnership, decided on another gambit&mdash open a second location in 1966. Surely increased visibility and name recognition would steer some of the populace to Pete's Super Submarines. Then they decided to take their gamble a step further, and they opened a third location. The third time was the charm; the old adage proved right on the money as the third store-in a highly accessible and visible location--began to take off. Not particularly superstitious, DeLuca and Buck did consider 'three' their lucky number and later emphasized positive numerology in their corporate marketing campaigns. As the business progressed, the partners found the name cumbersome and thought it sounded like 'pizza marine.' So Pete's Super Submarines was renamed Subway, taken from New York City's early underground railways built after the turn of the century. The shop's name was emblazoned in yellow, and the inside decor consisted of faux newspaper articles heralding the new mode of transportation.

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In 1974, as the partners approached the tenth year of their alliance, they were supposed to have had 32 submarine shops according to their initial business plan. Instead, they had half this number and decided to explore another option: franchising. DeLuca believed that franchising was the wave of the future, and soon he had convinced a friend to become the first franchisee. The new store opened in upstate Wallingford. The move, though a sound business decision, was a profound risk. The world was experiencing inflation, the dollar had been devalued twice in two years, an energy crisis had forced Americans to cut back on power and fuel usage, and unemployment was on the rise. Yet DeLuca and Buck seemed to have the golden touch; the franchised Subway did well, as did its successors (another 14 or so within the year). Although franchising was an excellent way to expand a business, DeLuca and Buck tinkered with the system for years before finding a formula with which they were completely happy. Yet both had discovered an incontrovertible truth: new business owners needed to invent a product, and then entice an ever growing number of customers. Doing both was demanding, but with franchising, the idea and product were already established so the new business owner simply had to bring in a clientele and keep them happy. From Nowhere to Everywhere: 1980-94 By 1983 there were 200 Subway shops and DeLuca and Buck discovered one of the largest hurdles was keeping their brand consistent in all locations. This was when the partners decided to have each location bake bread on the premises. As the first fast-food chain to bake bread at each location, Subway's sales steadily increased. The bread became a signature product, with its ingredients and oven time trade secrets. Just two years later, in 1985, after 20 years of partnership, DeLuca and Buck had 596 Subway stores in the United States and abroad; by 1987, the number had more than tripled to 1,810 shops. Subway's phenomenal growth continued unabated throughout the remainder of the 1980s and into the 1990s. In 1989, there were 4,071 stores; by 1992 there were 7,327. As more and more Subway franchises popped up across the nation as well as outside the United States, the partners had created the 'University of Subway,' an intensive two-week course
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at headquarters. Prospective franchisees learned the ins and outs of the Subway business, from the standard decor to bookkeeping, from baking the signature bread to the varied ingredients that made up the chain's popular sandwiches. Another key to Subway's ongoing expansion was innovation and taking convenience a step further than its competitors. Subway stores began appearing in unusual locations, catering to consumers where they might not expect a sandwich shop--at convenience stores and truck stops. These 'nontraditional' locations were a hit with traveling consumers and by 1993 some 50 such shops dotted the nation, with more on the way. Although these uniquely placed shops were a tiny fraction of Subway's 8,450 locations worldwide, the nontraditional shops thrived and would come to make up a fifth of the company's global sales in coming years. In 1994 Subway was nearing the 10,000 mark and DeLuca was determined to take on the world's largest fast-food chain, McDonald's Corporation. Although Subway was aggressively targeting the leader, the burger giant, founded in 1948, had nearly 20 years on the upstart Subway. No slough to ingenuity, McDonald's had stores in such nontraditional locations as Wal-Mart stores and Chevron and Amoco gas stations. A key to the success of both chains was consistency: customers counted on McDonald's decor and menu to be virtually the same from town to town; the same was true of Subway. Each chain, of course, made menu concessions in some countries--for Subway it was no pork products in areas with large Muslim populations; lots of salmon at the Norway shop; chicken salad with curry in British Subways; chicken satay with peanut sauce in Australian locations. A Global Leader: 1995-98 By 1995 Subway had sales of nearly $2.6 billion and 11,420 locations. DeLuca and Buck became increasingly active in charity, giving to a variety of groups including the Girl Scouts of America, Habitat for Humanity, Junior Achievement, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital, and many others. The company also held several business associations (Better Business Bureau of Western Connecticut, the Connecticut Restaurant Association, the International Franchise Association, the
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Milford Chamber of Commerce) and even turned to environmental issues. In this vein, Subway introduced the Chocolate Brazil Nut cookie this year, chock full of Brazilian nuts harvested from the Peruvian rainforests, which in turn employed some 250 people and helped keep the rainforest alive. In Subway's history, 1996 turned out to be a stellar year--the company's revenues increased nearly 25 percent to $3.2 billion, an incredible financial spurt by any standard. Part of the leap had come from further expansion to 12,516 locations, much of it in nontraditional locations. This was backed up by the numbers in 1997, when nontraditional shops reached 2,700, or about 20 percent of the chain's locations. The company had explored a myriad of unusual possibilities, including railway and bus stations, airports, casinos, amusement parks, arenas, hospitals, museums, and department stores. Subway shops in high schools, colleges, and universities were especially successful for both the company and the schools, as students stopped leaving campuses for lunch, bringing profits and jobs back into these establishments. Yet another major coup had been the exclusive agreement with NEXCOM (Naval Exchange Commission) to put Subway stores on naval bases worldwide. Further civic involvement came in the form of Micro Investment Lending Enterprise (MILE), founded by DeLuca in 1997 to provide small business loans to budding entrepreneurs. The MILE organization opened several chapters in Connecticut, hoped to spread throughout the United States, and created a web site called www.mile.org. In late 1997 and early 1998, numerology was back in Subway lore. Stories circulated about the chain's luck with the number 13, and the many fortunate combinations of seven and six. Not only had Subway gone over the 13,000 mark in 1997, but Total Food Service magazine of Greenwich, Connecticut, composed a list of factoids touting Subway's good luck. Beginning with DeLuca's birth on the third of October, there were a myriad of interesting and goofy figures revolving around six, seven, and 13: the menu's seven six-inch subs with six grams of fat or less; three international locations opened on the 13th of the month (Guam, September 13, 1989; South Korea, July 13, 1991; Morocco, December 13, 1997); 13 optional toppings for any sandwich; and consumers ate more than 13 million pounds of steak and almost 13 million pounds of roast beef for the year.
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By the fall of 1998, Subway had more than 13,229 shops worldwide and initiated a family-oriented advertising campaign to bring parents and kids into the stores. The company teamed up with Nickelodeon and its popular children's show 'Blue's Clues' for a Kids' Pak toy tied to the animated television show. Coining the term 'Mutual Agreement,' an agreement between parent and child to eat better meals, Subway hoped to capitalize on parents' quests for healthier alternatives to deep fried chicken parts and french fries or greasy hamburgers. Just as Subway had touted low-fat sandwiches for health-conscious adults, the Mutual Agreement was designed to capture the ten-and-under age group. Although sales for 1998 did not climb significantly ($3.4 billion, up from $3.3 billion the year before), Subway was still in solid financial shape. 1999 and Beyond Still targeting McDonald's in 1999, which had more than 25,000 locations worldwide and 40 percent of the U.S. fast-food market, Subway had managed to overtake Burger King as the second largest international restaurant chain, the latter having just less than 11,000 stores (although it remained the number two burger chain). To maintain its second-tier berth and expand further, Subway introduced its own brand of bottled water, a 16.9-fluid ounce container with the slogan 'Refreshing a Thirsty World' on the label, and stepped up national advertising. Its advertising campaigns had proved quite effective in the past, and the company itself had become a cultural icon. Subway shops were featured in major motion pictures (Lethal Weapon, Ace Ventura--When Nature Calls, Ransom, Kissing a Fool, and others) and popular television shows (the WB's huge hit 'Felicity,' among others), as well as on the Internet with its own frequently visited web site featuring an interactive game, contests, employment applications, franchise information, an entertainment guide (reviews of music, TV, movies, video games), restaurant locator, menu and nutrition information, and special promotions on Subway products. As the new century approached, Subway's development plans were impressive: to have opened 950 shops annually until 2005, including new locations in India, Germany, and Scotland; and, eventually, to have Subway shops in every country in the world. Subway was still chasing McDonald's as the industry's fast-food leader, but in the submarine
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sandwich marketplace both Blimpie (ranked second to Subway) and Quizno's (ranked third) were gaining ground. Although the New York-based Blimpie International had 2,000 shops by the end of 1999 and the Denver-based Quizno's Corporation had only 600 in the United States, Canada, and Japan, each chain had ambitious plans mirroring those of Subway&mdash expand and conquer in 2000 and beyond. In addition, there was the entry into the market of another specialty sandwich chain, Schlotzky's Inc., an Austinbased company. Schlotzsky's was nearing 800 deli stores in 1999 and, though it did not consider its 'sub' sandwiches the success of the company, which experienced 40 percent growth from 1998 to 1999, was certainly eating into Subway's bottom line. Yet perhaps the biggest question plaguing DeLuca and Buck was speculation about whether the privately owned company would ever go public. The response was generally the same--not an unequivocal denial, but a carefully evasive statement. 'We think that going public could take the focus off developing the business for our franchisees,' was what DeLuca told a reporter for the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal in 1997. But this was nothing business analysts and consultants had not heard before; anything was possible.

SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT OF SUBWAY

Together with the IPCs, we are dedicated to supporting SUBWAY franchisees in the most environmentally sustainable manner possible. From streamlining our supply chains, using sustainable sourcing practices to ensuring our high food quality and food safety standards are met, we not only help reduce energy, water usage and waste but were taking care of the environment too. Ultimately the health of our population depends on the health of the planet.
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In the past three years, our sustainability efforts in the US & Canada have significantly cut our resource consumption and reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 292,936 metric tons of CO2 (which is equivalent to 57,244 passenger cars not driven for a year) even as we grew by 12%. We have focused on five key areas:

Food Quality & Food Safety Sustainable Sourcing Practices Local Sourcing Animal Welfare Forced Labor and Human Trafficking Streamlining Supply Chain

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Streamlining Supply Chain

With tens of thousands of restaurants throughout the world, our supply chain needs to be as efficient and sustainable as possible. On a global basis, many of our vendors and suppliers have worked with us to add or move locations closer to our distributors and we have established redistribution centers, thus reducing shipping costs and emissions. We have a Distribution Operational Efficiency program that looks for ways to ensure all travel routes and driving techniques are optimized and trucks are shipped full to further reduce mileage. In 2007, we introduced a process in the U.S. that consolidates all equipment orders into one shipment for new and remodeled restaurants, eliminating excess packaging and unnecessary waste at the building site. It has now been expanded to Latin America.

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HOW TO COUNTERACT THE BULLWHIP EFFECT

Understanding the causes of the bullwhip effect can help managers find strategies to mitigate it. Indeed, many companies have begun to implement innovative programs that partially address the effect. Next we examine how companies tackle each of the four causes. We categorize the various initiatives and other possible remedies based on the underlying coordination mechanism, namely, information sharing, channel alignment, and operational efficiency. With information sharing, demand information at a downstream site is transmitted upstream in a timely fashion. Channel alignment is the coordination of pricing, transportation, inventory planning, and ownership between the upstream and downstream sites in a supply chain. Operational efficiency refers to activities that improve performance, such as reduced costs and lead-time. We use this topology to discuss ways to control the bullwhip effect (see Table 1). Avoid Multiple Demand Forecast Updates Ordinarily, every member of a supply chain conducts some sort of forecasting in connection with its planning (e.g., the manufacturer does the production planning, the wholesaler, the logistics planning, and so on). Bullwhip effects are created when supply chain members process the demand input from their immediate downstream member in producing their own forecasts. Demand input from the immediate downstream member, of course, results from that member's forecasting, with input from its own downstream member. One remedy to the repetitive processing of consumption data in a supply chain is to make demand data at a downstream site available to the upstream site. Break Order Batches Since order batching contributes to the bullwhip effect, companies need to devise strategies that lead to smaller batches or more frequent resupply. In addition, the counterstrategies we described earlier are useful. When an upstream company receives consumption data on a fixed, periodic schedule from its downstream customers, it will not be surprised by an unusually large batched order when there is a demand surge.
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One reason that order batches are large or order frequencies low is the relatively high cost of placing an order and replenishing it. EDI can reduce the cost of the paperwork in generating an order. Using EDI, companies such as Nabisco perform paperless, computer-assisted ordering (CAO), and, consequently, customers order more frequently. McKesson's Economost ordering system uses EDI to lower the transaction costs from orders by drugstores and other retailers." P&G has introduced standardized ordering terms across all business units to simplify the process and dramatically cut the number of invoices. The effect is that, for each product, the order frequency is much higher, the frequency of deliveries to the distributors remains unchanged, and the transportation efficiency is preserved. P&G has given discounts to distributors that are willing to order mixed-SKU (stock-keeping unit) loads of any of its products." Manufacturers could also prepare and ship mixed SKUs to the distributors' warehouses that are ready to deliver to the stores. "Composite distribution" for fresh produce and chilled products uses the same mixedSKU concept to make resupply more frequent. Since fresh produce and chilled foods need to be stored at different temperatures, trucks to transport them need to have various temperatures. British retailers like Tesco and Sainsbury use trucks with separate compartments at different temperatures so that they can transport many products on the same truck. The use of third-party logistics companies also helps make small batch replenishments economical. These companies allow economies of scale that were not feasible in a single suppliercustomer relationship. By consolidating loads from multiple suppliers located near each other, a company can realize full truckload economies without the batches coming from the same supplier. Of course, there are additional handling and administrative costs for such consolidations or multiple pickups, but the savings often outweigh the costs.

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Similarly, a third-party logistics company can utilize a truckload to deliver to customers who may be competitors, such as neighboring supermarkets. If each customer is supplied separately via full truckloads, using third-party logistics companies can mean moving from weekly to daily replenishments. For small customers whose volumes do not justify frequent full truckload replenishments independently, this is especially appealing. Some grocery wholesalers that receive FTL shipments from manufacturers and then ship mixed loads to wholesalers' independent stores use logistics companies. In the United Kingdom, Sainsbury and Tesco have long used National Freight Company for logistics. As a result of the heightened awareness due to the ECR initiative in the grocery industry, we expect to see third-party logistics companies that forecast orders, transport goods, and replenish stores with mixed-SKU pallets from the manufacturers. When customers spread their periodic orders or replenishments evenly over time, they can reduce the negative effect of batching. Some manufacturers coordinate their resupply with their customers. For example, P&G coordinates regular delivery appointments with its customers. Hence, it spreads the replenishments to all the retailers evenly over a week. Stabilize Prices The simplest way to control the bullwhip effect caused by forward buying and diversions is to reduce both the frequency and the level of wholesale price discounting. The manufacturer can reduce the incentives for retail forward buying by establishing a uniform wholesale pricing policy. In the grocery industry, major manufacturers such as P&G, Kraft, and Pillsbury have moved to an everyday low price (EDLP) or value pricing strategy. During the past three years, P&G has reduced its list prices by 12 percent to 24 percent and aggressively slashed the promotions it offers to trade customers. In 1994, P&G reported its highest profit margins in twenty-one years and showed increases in market share. Similarly, retailers and distributors can aggressively negotiate with their suppliers to give them everyday low cost (EDLC). From
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1991 to 1994, the percentage of trade deals in the total promotion budget of grocery products dropped from 50 percent to 47 percent. From an operational perspective, practices such as CRP together with a rationalized wholesale pricing policy can help to control retailers' tactics, such as diversion. Manufacturers' use of CAO for sending orders also minimizes the possibility of such a practice. Activity-based costing (ABC) systems enable companies to recognize the excessive costs of forward buying and diversions. When companies run regional promotions, some retailers buy in bulk in the area where the promotions are held, then divert the products to other regions for consumption. The costs of such practices are huge but may not show up in conventional accounting systems. ABC systems provide explicit accounting of the costs of inventory, storage, special handling, premium transportation, and so on that previously were hidden and often outweigh the benefits of promotions. ABC therefore helps companies implement the EDLP strategy. Eliminate Gaming in Shortage Situations When a supplier faces a shortage, instead of allocating products based on orders, it can allocate in proportion to past sales records. Customers then have no incentive to exaggerate their orders. General Motors has long used this method of allocation in cases of short supply, and other companies, such as Texas Instruments and Hewlett-Packard, are switching to it. "Gaming" during shortages peaks when customers have little information on the manufacturers' supply situation. The sharing of capacity and inventory information helps to alleviate customers' anxiety and, consequently, lessen their need to engage in gaming. But sharing capacity information is insufficient when there is a genuine shortage. Some manufacturers work with customers to place orders well in advance of the sales season. Thus they can adjust production capacity or scheduling with better knowledge of product demand. Finally, the generous return policies that manufacturers offer retailers aggravate gaming. Without a penalty, retailers will continue to exaggerate their needs and cancel orders. Not

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surprisingly, some computer manufacturers are beginning to enforce more stringent cancellation policies. We contend that the bullwhip effect results from rational decision making by members in the supply chain. Companies can effectively counteract the effect by thoroughly understanding its underlying causes. Industry leaders like Procter & Gamble are implementing innovative strategies that pose new challenges: integrating new information systems, defining new organizational relationships, and implementing new incentive and measurement systems. The choice for companies is clear: either let the bullwhip effect paralyze you or find a way to conquer it.

Refferences 1. www.sap.com.my 2. http://www.subway.com/subwayroot/default.aspx 3. logisticabout.com 4. Joseph H. W. (2010) Managing the Bullwhip

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