KnitKorp Inc has been successful at producing and selling knitwear for 10 years in Canada.  Annual sales are now at $41MM and increasing on average 2.2% per year.  KnitKorp is a wholesaler, with a stable customer base of 50 customers across Canada, 5 of which are major sports and department stores. The target market is 18-45 year olds (men and women) with an interest in sports, outdoor activities and casual fashion. This market has consistently demonstrated a willingness to spend more for quality products.  The bread and butter product categories are knit hats (including winter, winter sports and sports team embellished goods), mitts/gloves (same), winter scarves (same), socks (esp hiking, winter socks and sport team embellished goods).  The company has recently expanded to knit fashion accessories like scarves, shawls and wraps (light and heavy) as well as knit slippers and house socks.  In addition to finished wearable goods, KnitKorp also produces a small amount of wool yarn for the growing fibre crafts industry, where the customers are boutique style yarn shops.  So far the company has stayed away from knit sweaters and other larger clothing but continues to analyze the market possibilities.

 

In total, the company has around 5000 SKUs.  KnitKorp buys raw wool as well as finished yarn (esp for the sports embellished goods) and processes (by dyeing and spinning) the wool into yarn and further machine knitting the yarn into finished wearable products. The company has one manufacturing centre in Calgary, a 300 000 sq ft facility in the southeast.  The company delivers the goods to the customers using rail to the east and west and trucks to major centres.  KnitKorp has steady orders throughout the year, with a seasonal spike of shipments in July/August for winter orders as well as a smaller spike in February/March for the start of hiking season.  The orders are usually placed 1 month before shipping, as KnitKorp stocks the yarn and produces finished goods as required.  A small amount of a subset of finished goods (biggest sellers) is available for emergency orders.  KnitKorp is analyzing the possibility of changing this strategy to stock finished goods in order to significantly reduce the lead time to its customers.  This will require a closer relationship with the customer base, that includes sharing of forecasts and planned orders.

 

KnitKorp has limited measurement and reporting capabilities and is looking for a good basis to expand their capabilities.

 

Based on the case above

THE QUESTION can you:

1.  Determine the types of supply chain systems that are required for KnitKorp.  

2. Analyze the data in the Excel tables.  Identify and correct any data issues (data cleanse) and explain these in a slide.  Identify and describe the types of data (eg master, transactional).  Identify and describe data hierarchies and the data relationships.  

3. Create at least three summaries of the data (pivot tables are fine).  

4. Create a sales forecast by Style and by Week for the next 16 weeks.  The data you create will be used in part 2 of the project.