The Lean and Agile model in the future of Wing and Leg

The company that is dealing in poultry meat has the freshness of her product and the time of delivery comes into spotlight. The company produces and uses retailers to link it with the final consumer. It is emerging that the increasing clientele base has brought so many complexities that the time of delivery for a chicken has increased and as a consequent, Leg & Wing products now have a prolonged shelf time and the quality of chicken has deteriorated by the time it reaches the final consumer. From this, research concludes that the company’s supply chain needs an alternative course of action (Stephan, Jack & Adrie, 327). Recent developments show that the organization has adopted a lean chain supply management and has reported substantial improvements.

The customer base has also expanded and as the customers become many, great variations in customer specification are revealing. Retailers have responded to these market dynamics by promotional activities that are hardly communicated to Leg & Wing. Even then, customer demand is unpredictable and the company has been forced to outsource poultry outside its traditional chain. From this, Leg & Wing ought to have realized that it is dealing with many retailers and serving a vast customer base that brings with it enormous data that has to be well tracked to determine if a performance of activities add value and meet the final consumer‘s specifications. Collecting big data and tracking it is thus an area that will help the poultry firm monitor and continuously monitor activities for total quality management.

Consumers or retailers will place the order online specifying what they would like supplied where a logistics company can be outsourced and delivering within a few hours after processing hardly going beyond a day. This will also improve the customer information flow to the Wing & Leg Company leading to further improvements in decision making to factor in future patterns of consumer demand based on information collected in the past. Wing and Leg Company can also reduce speed and increase the velocity of its packed chicken by ensuring that packaging size of materials is substantially reduced and assorted. Already, it is emerging that there exist different customer and consumer variants; most of the Wing & Leg consumers prefer either: 4, 6 or 10 legs in a packet bringing the number of variants to 3.

On the other hand, retailers use their private labels in the final packed product bringing in the aspect of consumer variants (Stephan, Jack & Adrie, 331, 332). The two modes of decoupling offer a number of benefits as the improvement of the supply chain of Wings & Leg is concerned. Information decoupling point Information decoupling managements point is cited by Siddhartha and Amit 27 as the utmost point to which information on the final consumer demand enters the food chain and transcends upstream. When such information enters the supply chain, it will be important for forecasting on real-time demand fostering effective planning. It will also help in tailoring demand as determined by real-time demand. Such an information flow is coming at the right time it is that Wing & Leg is coming at a time when the organization is facing a variant customer demand that is unpredictable.

This resembles the “assemble to order” where a package is done as specified by the consumer in their ordering for the supplied goods. Downstream from the material decoupling point, commodities will be differentiated appealing to different consumer tastes differently (Abbey et al. Material decoupling will be generic meaning that, services are placed closer to the customer as much as possible. Besides the customer specification information flow, Wing and leg will have an added advantage of reducing the lead time for supply significantly, yet helping deliver the freshest and high-quality chicken (Stephan, Jack & Adrie, 333). This remains an area that the Dutch chicken consumer places a lot of significance something that will go a long way to creating a strong brand name for the Wing & Leg company.

Material decoupling thus facilitates to downstream flow of information and information decoupling encourages the upward flow of information leading to an informed buyer and supplier who both satisfy the specification of the other with the least defects if any. This is the core goal of lean and agile as inefficiencies are minimized, needs to be met and the chain turns to be responsive fast enough to the specifications of the consumer or the priorities of the supplier (Fernie & Leigh). Importance of retailer exchanging information with Wing & Leg more timely and more accurately While information and material decoupling will go a long way to enhance information exchange between the end consumer and the seller (Wing & Leg), most managers at Wing and Leg see the exchange of information about price between retailers and the organization as difficult to achieve.

Even then, Wing & Leg ought to commit to every possible strategy as sharing promotion information about price will be very important to improving the supply chain that has been targeted so much in the recent days. Since it is the retailer who is in direct contact with the final consumer, by exchanging price promotional information, the retailer can constantly improve the quality of the product and set prices that are suitable to the consumer. In the case of Wing & Leg, those who are at the lower end of the supply chain are likely to get a lot of information about the manufacturer, in the case of Wing & Leg, the retailers, and the consumers. When they know with exactness what the processor of the poultry meat that they are spending has spent, then they will recognize that they are rewarding a few dollars for valued addition and they would rather buy from the chicken producer whom they know what they are paying him for at every stage rather than buying from others whom they do not know what value-added cost because they feel that they are being cornered through price.

Sharing of price information is thus something that Wing & Leg with her retailers ought to capitalize upon. By paying a close link between the chicken processor and the retailer, Wing & Leg also has the advantage of getting timely information as relates to a fluctuation of demand in the market (Fergusson & Gilvan, 98). Already, the chicken dealer is in a market that is vast and dynamic to the extent that she has not reached a point where demand would be rightfully forecasted. This will help much in tailoring products. The chicken processor can also think of opening an online selling platform where she would reduce the time of delivery and deliver a customer’s order and also package product into smaller packages. To go lean and agile, material and information decoupling are highly recommended for Wing & Leg.

Material decoupling will foster a flow about the products from the supply and trickle downwards to the final consumer where informational decoupling will facilitate to flow of information about the consumer and move upstream to the supplier of raw chicken. Linking the two informational flows will be of great significance to both Wing & Leg and her final consumers. , & Atalay, S. Remanufactured products in closed‐loop supply chains for consumer goods.  Production and Operations Management, 24(3), 488-503. Gattorna, John.  Dynamic supply chains.  Logistics and retail management: emerging issues and new challenges in the retail supply chain. Kogan page publishers, 2014. Ferguson, Mark E. , and Gilvan C. Souza, eds. PGBM 63 Global Logistics & Supply Chain Management. Ugarte, Gustavo M. , Jay S. Golden, and Kevin J. Dooley.