Supply Chain Management of VF Brands

Question: Discuss about theSupply Chain Management of VF Brands. Answer: Introduction VF Brands Company is renowned for serving consumers with more than 30 brands trough several medium of distribution. Several brands of the company includes Jeanswear, image wear, contemporary brands, sportswear and outdoor and actions sports (Yu and Tseng 2014). The firm is focused on achieving sustainable, extended term growth driven by constant geographic expansion long with the companys wholesale partners and owned retail, acquisitions and product innovations. The objective of the report is to describe VF Brands supply chain along with its activities, partners, relationships and shareholders. Moreover, the two major brands or products of the along with the business needs of its consumers will be evaluated through assessing the effectiveness of its supply chain in meet business requirements (Gemp et al. 2014). The report evaluates the supply chain strategy of VF Brands international supply chain strategy. It was gathered that the company has employed a combination of in-house manufa cturing along with traditional arms-length sourcing arrangements. Illustration and Description of VFs Supply Chain Importance of VF Supply Chain Activities and its Link with Strategic Goals VF Brands has recently modified its supply chain strategy in which the company focused on producing apparels from its own plants and its huge suppliers network. Outsourcing strategy is one among the major supply chain activities of the company. This activity of VF Brands is focused on ensuring flexibility (Yang et al. 2015). Outsourcing activity also offers strong incentives for its suppliers in decreasing costs for competing with its upcoming contracts. Sourcing activities was developed for every single product of the company. This had to be done on several levels of its supply chain and not only for the final garment assemblage (Annese et al. 2014). Outsourcing supply chain activity facilitated VF Brands to identify its sources for raw materials, accessories and fabrics so that they are produced in cost effective manner and as per the demands of its consumers internationally. The company in consideration to their managerial also selected suppliers and technical capabilities along with expertise in particular garment segments of the brand (Tajabadi and Kazemi 2016). Another major activity of VF Brands supply chain is strategy of traditional sourcing and in-house manufacturing. This unique operations strategy offered the company a competitive advantage as all its competitors completely relied on outsourcing rather than any internal manufacturing (Altmann 2014). Such supply chain activity ensured that Brands internal manufacturing plants were observed to be among the best all over the world in respect of reliability, quality and efficiency. Building a superior quality supplier network is the third major supply chain activity of VF Brands. Under this activity, the prospective suppliers were required to be visited and their production capabilities were carefully evaluated. Such activity helped the company to meet its strategic goals of maintaining a strict policy of conducting business with the suppliers those followed globally renowned standards for employee safety and protection (Annese et al. 2014). This major supply chain activity facilitated the company in maintaining efficient working relationships with suppliers. The supply chain activities of VF Brands also included expansion of its product lines internationally with constant replenishment of fresh designs. The product designers of the company totally focused on generating a new range of fashion products that has the capability to address new consumer expectations (Lee and Kashmanian 2013). Business Requirements of VF the Brands Consumers have towards its Supply Chain The supply chain strategy of VF Brands is observed to be aligned with its major business requirements. The consumers of some of the major brands of VF Brands Company have certain business requirements that the brands must have towards the companys supply chain. Lee and Wrangler are deemed two major brands of VF Brands Company whose consumers have several business requirements from the supply chain of these brands (Lee and Kashmanian 2013). Because of the globalization of the supply chains of these two brands, VF Brands faced challenges regarding finding suppliers, coordinating product flows and managing sourcing relationships. The consumers of these two Jeanswear brands expected the companys supply chain offer fully integrated services to them. The consumers of these brands demanded quick service. In consideration to such expectations of the consumers of its lee and wrangler Jeanswear brands, VF Brands decided to manufacture 60% of its jeans in-house (Yang et al. 2015). These brands were greatly targeted within the US market that needed extremely quick response times and sourced a great range of the products under the brands internally. The consumers of these brands expected the companys Jeanswear brands such as lee and Wrangler to present classic product lines with new designs every year. To address such business requirements, VF Brands outsourced its supply chain activities such as raw materials gathering and manufacturing in order to minimize its inventory costs despite of presenting newly designed Jeanswear as per consumers expectations. The VF Brands attained huge experience with sourcing for its two major brands (Lee and Wrangler) (Annese et al. 2014). Considering this, its management team also started to realize that the companys supply chain network offered a considerable platform for business growth for these brands. Because of the considerable differences in the consumers product requirements for these brands across several regions of the world, all through the season VF Brands supply chain ensured to be extremely responsive to these needs. To address different needs of consumers in different regions, VF B rands supply chain management had developed planned internal and external capacity, managed inventory and streamlined manufacturing processes and product designs needed to go from fabric to finished goods on its entire stores shelf (Yang et al. 2015). Sourcing Arrangements and their Strategic Implications The Third way can be deemed as a partnership model, which includes arrangements of traditional sourcing and certain aspects of outsourcing and collaboration. It is revealed that the objective of such supply chain strategy is to develop a sourcing relationship that consist certain virtues of vertical integration with the sourcing flexibility (Kashmanian and Moore 2014). One among the three sourcing arrangements under the third way strategy is cut and make contracts. Under this sourcing arrangement approach, VF Brands tend to strike distinct contracts for its suppliers at every stage of the manufacturing process (components fabric, cutting, sewing, finishing, and washing) (Delke 2015). VF Brands Company owned the inventory and along with that, the suppliers were paid for the value added of their specific step. The Company was also accountable for coordinating the products flow from one supplier to another. The benefit of such approach is that it facilitated the company to maintain a gr eat control on the costs at every stage. CM contracts were mostly employed for heritage lines out of the Central American along with Carrabin suppliers and were managed in accordance with internal production operations (Papadopoulos et al. 2017). The second approach is package sourcing under which the suppliers of the company, an individual supply accepts of the responsibility for the overall process from the raw materials to the finished products and shipping them to the market. They were paid based on every single manufactured piece and had the responsibility of paying their sub-contractors, suppliers of raw materials along with logistic expenses (More and Subash Babu 2012). In such situation, VF Brands Company did not have any kind of materials ownership along the production process. Full package sourcing is the third approach that was generally used for the companys lifestyle brands all through its business units in Asia, Northern Africa and Europe. The third approach was to enhance the quality and reliability of the companys service that they received from the sourcing (Yu and Tseng 2014). These three sourcing arrangements within the VF Brand companys Third Way strategy is very effective in bringing down the expenses through continuously expanding the base of suppliers to the lower cost locations. An increasing focus on the low cost sourcing has enabled the company to attain its total corporate margin targets (10-15%) (Delke 2015). However, it is also believed that in consideration to its major sourcing arrangements VF Brands Company requires to shift its attention from searching the lower cost suppliers to better management of its suppliers base. Conclusion The objective of the report was to describe VF Brands supply chain along with its activities, partners, relationships and shareholders. The report evaluated the supply chain strategy of VF Brands international supply chain strategy. It was gathered that the company has employed a combination of in-house manufacturing along with traditional arms-length sourcing arrangements. It was gathered from the report that the major activity of VF Brands supply chain is strategy of traditional sourcing and in-house manufacturing. This unique operations strategy offered the company a competitive advantage as all its competitors completely relied on outsourcing rather than any internal manufacturing. It was also revealed that the objective of such supply chain strategy is to develop a sourcing relationship that consist certain virtues of vertical integration with the sourcing flexibility. Evaluation of the supply chain strategy finally depicted that VF Brand Companys Third Way strategy is very effe ctive in bringing down the expenses through continuously expanding the base of suppliers to the lower cost locations. Reference List Altmann, M., 2014. A robust optimization approach for de-signing an environmentally conscious supply chain with consideration of cus-tomer-specific environmental product.Supply Management Research: Aktuelle Forschungsergebnisse 2014, p.185. Annese, V.F., Biccario, G.E., Cipriani, S. and De Venuto, D., 2014. Organoleptic properties remote sensing and life-time prediction along the perishables goods supply-chain. InProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Sensing Technology. Annese, V.F., Loseto, G., Ruta, M., Di Sciascio, E. and De Venuto, D., 2014. Wireless Sensor Network and On-line Shelf-Life Prediction in Perishable Goods Supply Chain through First-Order Kinetic Model.Proceedings of SCORE@ POLIBA, pp.3-5. Delke, V.F., 2015. 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