J. C. Penny Case Study

Arguably, clothes have to be one of the most dynamic items to be invented presently. Of interest in this is how they manage to keep the market flooded with seasonal clothing and wear and recently their use of e-commerce. ‘J. C. Penny’ is notably one of the largest department stores in the United States of America at present with an overwhelming 1000plus stores. As a large company, their supply chain is mostly directly from the manufacturers varying in place product and country of origin. In that case, hinterland transport is clouded with hired trucks to ferry goods to their outlets.

As building blocks to the success of the process, techniques that include synchronization, streamlining of operations, analysis, optimization of fleet performance and intense communication are necessary to this sector due to its seasonal nature and the other requirements of other sectors. In my opinion, the company has excelled in SCM and this is a reason why they reign high in the market. In light of the stiff competition that has led to the use of the internet for sales as opposed to marketing alone. It is necessary to take measures to ensure the available opportunity is harnessed for the benefit of the company at large.

Given a chance, I would differentiate the operations of the outlets and the e-commerce. Currently, warehousing and logistics share resources and thus e-commerce is likely to be disfavored and underexploited. Much of these is seen in the inability of the company to ship outside the US and Canada. To increase efficiency and exploit the growing demand of the commodities, a division of the warehousing activities as well as outsourcing is a best fit (Mentzer, 2001). A large international shipping company enjoys economies of scale that would minimize costs and provide larger area of coverage. These considerations should be parallel to the ongoing hinterland trucking done by the company such that there is no overlap that will lead to extra costs which can be averted.