Instead of abiding by the conventional hospital supply process, in which bulk orders are placed weekly or monthly and delivered to hospital warehouses, Baxter Healthcare Corp., a vendor in Deerfield, Ill., now sends supplies daily to nursing floors and clinic offices as they are needed. While customers see benefits in lower storage costs and improved availability of goods, vendors expect to gain by matching production to consumption. Storing raw materials and finished goods ties up capital and incurs warehousing expense. VMI driven by consumer demand has become widespread in many retailing environments. Serving as category manager encourages a longer-term focus in marketing and merchandising.
Customers are most likely to trust a manufacturer who leads the field.
You won't become a category manager if you don't have a leading role. N.Y. ISSC now provides CRP service to more than 40 major manufacturers-a better than 600 percent increase achieved in the single year since it began marketing the system. ISSC says it expects to have 70 companies online by the end of this year. Proliferating inventory management systems industrywide are affecting plans for brand name manufacturers to compete with private label products and smaller retail chains and independents to compete with megachains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Before the advent of QR and ECR, relationships between manufacturers and retailers were most often characterized by mutual distrust.