SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT QUESTION Case Study: Zara's Unique Business Model is Driven by Its Supply Chain Capabilities. Zara changes its clothing designs every two weeks on average, while competitors change their designs every two or three months. It carries about 11,000 distinct items per year in thousands of stores worldwide compared to competitors that carry 2,000 to 4,000 items per year in their stores. Zara's highly responsive supply chain is central to its business success. The heart of the company and its supply chain is a huge, highly automated distribution centre (DC) called "The Cube". The screenshot below shows a closeup satellite view of this facility. The company was founded in Spain in 1974. It is the flagship business unit of a holding company called Inditex Corporation with headquarters in Arteixo, Galicia; a city in north- western Spain near where the company founder, Amancio Ortega was born. In 2018 Zara was ranked as the 46th most valuable brand in the world by Forbes (see bibliography below). Agents for the company are always scouting out new fashion trends at clubs and social gatherings. When they see inspiring examples they quickly send design sketches to the garment designers at the Cube. New items can be designed and out to the stores in 4 - 6 weeks, and existing items can be modified in 2 weeks. The company's core market is women 24 - 35 years old. They reach this market by locating their stores in town centres and places with high concentrations of women in this age range. Short production runs create scarcity of given designs and that generates a sense of urgency and reason to buy while supplies last. As a consequence, Zara does not have lots of excess inventory, nor does it need to do big mark-downs on its clothing items. Zara has 12 inventory turns per year compared to 3 - 4 per year for competitors. Stores place orders twice a week and this drives factory scheduling. Such short term focused order cycles make forecasts very accurate, much more accurate than competitors who may order every two weeks or every month. Factories can increase and decrease production quickly, thus there is less inventory in the supply chain and less need to finance that inventory with working capital. They do only 50 - 60 percent of their manufacturing in advance versus the 80 - 90 percent done by competitors. So Zara does not need to place big bets on yearly fashion trends. They can make many smaller bets on short term trends that are easier to call correctly. Zara buys large quantities of only a few types of fabric (just four or five types, but they can change from year to year), and does the garment design and related cutting and dyeing in- house. This way fabric manufacturers can make quick deliveries of bulk quantities of fabric directly to the Zara DC - the Cube. The company purchases raw fabric from suppliers in Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece. And those suppliers deliver within 5 days of orders being placed. Inbound logistics from suppliers are mostly by truck. The Cube is 464,500 square meters (5 million square feet), and highly automated with underground monorail links to 11 factories within a 16 km (10 mile ) radius of the Cube. All raw materials pass through the cube and all finished goods also pass through on their way to stores. The diagram below illustrates Zara's supply chain model. The 11 Zara owned factories are connected to the Cube by underground tunnels with high speed monorails (about 200 kilometres or 124 miles of rails) to move cut fabric to these factories for dyeing and assembly into clothing items. The factories also use the monorail system to return finished products to the Cube for shipment to stores. Manufacturing is centered in north-western Spain where company headquarters and the Cube are located. But for their main distribution and logistics hub they chose a more centrally located facility. That facility is located in Zaragoza in a large logistics hub developed by the Spanish government. Raw material is sent by suppliers to Zara's manufacturing centre. Then finished garments leave the Cube and are transported to the Zara logistics hub in Zaragoza. And from there they are delivered to stores around the world by truck and by plane. Zara can deliver garments to stores worldwide in just a few days: China - 48 hrs; Europe - 24 hrs; Japan - 72 hrs; United States - 48 hrs. It uses trucks to deliver to stores in Europe and uses air freight to ship clothes to other markets. Zara can afford this increased shipping cost because it does not need to do much discounting of clothes and it also does not spend much money on advertising. Zara has spent more than 30 years building its unique real-time supply chain and training its people. So competitors have a lot of learning to do to create the mental models and roll out the operating procedures needed to do what Zara does so well. I need help is answering the questions below based on the case study , thank you Part A a. Explain the material and information flow necessary in supply chain management of Zara. b. Analyse the scope of supply chain management in Zara. c. Evaluate the contribution of supply chain management to the achievement of competitive advantage in Zara. d. Explain the supplier-buyer relationship in Zara. e. Analyse the impact of business-to-business relationships on business operations of Zara. f. Analyse the impact of business-to-consumer relationships on business operations of Zara. Part B a. Explain role of distribution in supply chain management of Zara. b. Analyse the distribution systems used in Zara. c. Evaluate the contribution of distribution in supply chain management of Zara. d. Explain how industry relates to supply chain management in business. e. Analyse the effect of supply chain management on industry in business. f. Evaluate the contribution of supply chain management to the industrial sector in business within which Zara operates