The market for consumer products (fashion, replenishment items, and even hard goods) requires that suppliers deliver a product to market faster, respond quickly to changes in forecast demand, and take responsibility for helping retailers achieve a desired maintained margin.

As a client of ours wryly observed, “Speed Kills”, meaning that you can either achieve a strategic advantage by beating competitors to market, or you can get killed if you do not have a competitive supply chain management process.
In response to this incessant demand for improving Supply Chain performance, suppliers of product are focusing on every step and function in the supply chain to see what adds value and what is of no value.

The Context Group approaches improving Supply Chain performance by combining a strategic approach with practical tactical solutions that save time and money for our clients. This includes the following services:

• Supply Chain Strategy assessment
• Sourcing – evaluation and assistance in establishing new sourcing
• Development of inventory planning and management processes
• Benchmarking - evaluating how a company is performing on Supply Chain key performance indicators ( KPI)
• Software product evaluation and acquisition
• Helping implement tactical solutions - cycle time reduction, sales forecasting, inventory management, and related functional system

The Context Group has extensive experience in all supply chain management systems, including many of the major software packages, and in customization of these systems. Our experience has covered the following functional areas:

Success Story: Carriage Industries

The Context Group assisted Carriage Industries, a Dixie group company, in developing and improving its systems and processes for forecasting, production planning and inventory management. The company improved inventory turns dramatically to over 6 turns, and reduced inventory investment by over $13 million. As part of Dixie's strategy to exit from the textile business The Context Group advised and assisted in the successful sale of the Caroknit fabric business to Spartan Mills.

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