Mini Project Field Study: Estimating the Length of a Supply Chain for . From each retail store, collect the following data for an FMCG Company each of the selected product lines: The objective of the study is to estimate the length of the Packing/manufacturing date on stock held at supply chain for packed goods. This field study will help retailer (as per the law, all packaged goods you in understanding supply chain opportunities in distri- companies are expected to print manufacture bution in India. ing date/month data on each package) METHODOLOGY O Estimate of average sales rate (How many units Pick up two competing companies from the FMCG are sold per month?) sector. Identify the different product lines offered by o Stock available with the retailer these companies. Estimate length of chain Select four retailers (two from organized sector and two from the unorganized sector) for the study. Estimation of Chain Length B Manufacturing date Time at which the Estimated time study is done of sale Item Data collected from retailer A Ba A + B Stock (units) Sales (units) Date of manufacture (in months) (in months) (in months) /Month on stocks held" Product line X 20 40 October 2014 2. 0.25 2.75 Product line Y 40 20 September 2014 3.5 4.5 Product line Z 30 10 August 2014 4.5 1.5 6.0 Average time stock would spend at retailer from the time of study = (stock/sales)/2. If the date of manufacture is August 2014, we can assume that the actual date of manufacture is 15 August 2014. 1241 Supply Chain Management Let us suppose that three products X, Y and Z have Compare and contrast the time taken in chain been chosen for the study and the study was carried for a fast-moving product (Colgate toothpaste) out at the end of December 2014. Data (stocks, sales vis-a-vis a slow-moving product (Colgate-Pal- rate, manufacturing date on stocks on the shelf) and molive shaving cream). estimation of the length of the chain for the three prod- o uct lines is as shown in the table above. Compare the time taken by a chain for the or- ganized retailer (Subhiksha, Foodworld) vis-a- The same analysis can be carried out for multiple vis a neighbourhood kirana (the unorganized retailers for the same company. Use the above meth- retailer, also known as mom-and-pop stores) odology to carry out the following analysis: store. o Compare the time taken by a large firm (say Colgate) and small firm (say Anchor)