(Solved Homework): Analyze Whole Food's current just-in-time philosophy, statistical technique, and…

Whole food was founded in the year 1978 and is a comapny that sells only the organic and natural food. It has around 300 stroes across US and some stores in Canada and UK.

The philosophy of Just-in-time(JIT) is simple: It says Inventory is a waste. JIT tries to eleminate the inventory holding cost for a company. Whole food has given a lot of autonomy for the stores, it is following a decentralised model. Stores can choose when and from where to order the inventory. High amount of analysis is done to determine the customer’s preference in a particular area and the inventory is ordered accordingly. Decentralization is done to improve process efiiciency, Capacity Utilization and Cost effectiveness. A key point to note here would be the even though the stores are decentralized the corporate standards must be maintained in all the strores at all the location. Whole food has a Whole Trade Guarantee which which prioritizes suppliers with acceptable sustainability and fair labor practices. This is a very good practice to improve the standardsa and qualicty and improve the supply chain management, especially when it comes to Just-in-time delivery.

Location Strategy: The company has 12 geographical divisions, a national headquarters, reginal distribution centres, meat and seafood processing centers and a speciality tea/coffee procurement operations. The strategy in terms of location of the stores is to target the urban areas, as of now. Most of the outlets of whole food is in the cities. Whole foods launched “365 by Whole Foods Market” a new concept store, aimed at modern shopper. This is in line with the company’s core business and even though a little cannibalisation will occur the stores will still be profitable.