Discuss about the Logistics and Supply Chain Management for Decathlon.

 

The different aspects of internal returns has been determined with transportation of goods from loading dock to the e-commerce department. The two main types of the returns faced by Decathlon has been identified with transportation return and client return. In case the client is not aware of his order the warehouse man is seen to be in charge of customer service with the Google Drive file. In such a return order customer service are able to reach to the client first. The client return process is a result of client changing his mind for ordering due to wrong size, customer mistakes or poor quality of the product. The external returns on the other hand is identified with returning of the goods from a date of purchase of up to 365 days (Lai, Ulhas and Lin 2014).

Some of the initiatives which can be taken in the external flow of the materials has been identified with allowing for higher weight categories of product. At present the external flow shipments are restricted to only 30 Kgs , by improving the maximum weight threshold the company will be able to send shipments of the customers in more bulk quantity.

The internal process of transformation return can be improved by doing a pre-inspection of the orders for the final delivery to the customers. The client return process needs to be made more dynamic by facilitating a customer support team who can help with the customer queries online.

Some of the steps that can be added to the present return process has been stated below:

 

Figure: Value Stream Mapping of the Return Process

(Source: Solutions-for-sharepoint.com. 2017)

 

The process in the e-commerce return needs to be improved with faster inspection of the goods in the e-commerce department itself. The inspection for size should be also be ensured as this will significantly reduce the increasing number of internal returns in the warehouse.

The overall return process needs to be re-optimised based on three important factors namely:

• Total number of items returned for customer mistakes
• Total number of items returned for bad quality
• Total number of items returned for wrong size

The next step should include giving more options for payment to the customers such as cash on delivery. This will ensure that in case an order is cancelled there would be no hassle for online repayment (Valmohammadi and Dashti 2016).

References

Lai, J.Y., Ulhas, K.R. and Lin, J.D., 2014. Assessing and managing e-commerce service convenience. Information Systems Frontiers, 16(2), pp.273-289.

Solutions-for-sharepoint.com. (2017). [online] Available at: https://solutions-for-sharepoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/image.png [Accessed 20 Oct. 2017].

Valmohammadi, C. and Dashti, S., 2016. Using interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy analytical process to identify and prioritize the interactive barriers of e-commerce implementation. Information & Management, 53(2), pp.157-168.