Store-First, Warehouse-Second Logistics

“This means thinking about what’s best for the customer and the individual store, not what’s easiest for the central warehouse. Anything we can do to help the store and make things work, we must do, no matter how cumbersome it is. In the long run, it pays dividends.”

“We call the standing warehouse items “pull items”; the stores continually pull them into their facilities to offer their customers. The seasonals and onetimers, on the other hand, we call “push items”; we in the home office in Oklahoma City make the decision to push them into the stores for a given period. Every week, a store manager fills out his or her “pull” order. A computer printout lists all 46,000 items and tells how many of each should be on hand in that store to constitute a two-month supply. If the store’s stock is below that number, it should reorder. Within twenty-four hours (or forty-eight at the most), a truck will show up with that merchandise, so the store doesn’t even come close to running out.”