WSJ.com - Made to Measure: Invisible Supplier Has Penney’s Shirts All Buttoned Up

September 11. 2003 by Del.

Excellent example of effective use of information technology in the supply chain.

WSJ.com - Made to Measure: Invisible Supplier Has Penney’s Shirts All Buttoned Up: “Made to Measure: Invisible Supplier

Has Penney’s Shirts All Buttoned Up

From Hong Kong, It Tracks Sales, Restocks

Shelves and Ships Shirts Straight to the Store

By GABRIEL KAHN

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

On a Saturday afternoon in August, Carolyn Thurmond walked into a J.C. Penney store in Atlanta’s Northlake Mall and bought a white Stafford wrinkle-free dress shirt for her husband, size 17 neck, 34/35 sleeve.

On Monday morning, a computer technician in Hong Kong downloaded a record of the sale. By Wednesday afternoon, a factory worker in Taiwan had packed an identical replacement shirt into a bundle to be shipped back to the Atlanta store.

This speedy process, part of a streamlined supply chain and production system for dress shirts that was years in the making, has put Penney at the forefront of the continuing revolution in U.S. retailing. In an industry where the goal is speedy turnaround of merchandise, Penney stores now hold almost no extra inventory of house-brand dress shirts. Less than a decade ago, Penney would have had thousands of them warehoused across the U.S., tying up capital and slowly going out of style.”

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