Supply Chain Management

A supply chain is the sequence of business processes and information that provides a product or service from suppliers through manufacturing and distribution to finally, the customer. Mens Wearhouse uses two different supply chains (there is only one diffenrece between the two). First they have the suppliers who provide the materials for making the suit (ex. cloth and thread). Then there are the brand name factories in which brand name suits, sport coats, and shoes are made (ex. Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Bostonian). These items are bought by TMW and delivered to a warehouse. From this central hub (Mens Wearhous owned) the products are shipped to individual MW stores across the country. Once they are delivered to the stores, the products are put onto the selling floor ready to be sold to the customer. Finally the customer can purchase a suit, get it altered for the best fit and take the item home. The other supply chain is used for dress shirts, casual shirts, and custom clothing. the only difference is that the factories are not other brand name owned factories; TMW owns the labels for these items.

TMW delivery performance is quite satisfactory. Each store gets a shipment of products twice, every week. The qualtity is also very good. The return rate is very low, while the rate for a customer who becomes a regular shopper at TMW is pretty high. The Mens Wearhouse uses an innovative supply chain managment for quick respose to unpredictable demand to minimize stockouts, lost sales, and markdowns. The only part that is unsatisfactory is the custom orders and improvements need to be made. It can take anywhere from four to six weeks to arrive for a customer. One way to improve this it to use the techniques used by dell, in which when an order is made, the inofrmation is sent out to all departments at one time rather than one department at a time. This will speed up this process significantly.

Managing Quality

The Mens Wearhouse (TMW) is a company that takes pride in the service and the quality of the merchandise they offer. Although they are achieving their goals and are headed towards their intended path, Mens Wearhouse is always looking for improvements that can be made. TMW believes that they should continuously strive to improve quality by meeting customer needs and reducing variability in all processes by introducing new products when needed.

TMW takes full use of the four dimensions of quality in which first, before there is any production, specifications must be set for the product (Quality of Design). Then they produce the product that meets the required specifications set forth in the design stage (Quality of Conformance). For example, Mens Wearhouse produces a suit that is aimed for the inexpensive shoppers. The customers get a great suit for that price range; these are the specifications. After these two steps, Mens Wearhouse continues its promise of quality by Guaranteeing that it is available, reliable, and maintainable. An example of maintainability is the MW's guarantee on alteration. Once they have done a specific alteration on a product, they will re-alter that same alteration again, for free. Another example would be if the hem of a pair of slacks became undone; they would fix it right away. And finally they have their customer service, which ensures that any problems will be taken care of effectively and immediately.

Quality Control

The quality control that Mens Wearhouse utilizes is the Quality Control Chart. This chart has a center line and lines above and below the center one. the center line is the average quality characterstic being measured. The line above is the upper control limit which represents the maximum acceptable random variation. The below line is the lower control limit which represents the minimum. If normal probability is assumed, these control limits will include 99.74% of random varations observed. Then attribute control is used using samples of 50-300. This uses a discrete scale rater than a continuous scale. With this, you consider the percentage of defectives occuring in a sample as the attribute measured. The percentage defective is estimated by taking a sample of units random at specific time intervals.

The six sigma quality approach is used. This process is usually applied to service and manufacturing comapnies. With this method, imporvements of merchandise and service are made using five steps.
1. Define: a process is chosen for improvements and a charter is specified.
2. Measure: quality is measured by customer tendencies and reactions. Goals are set for improvements.
3. Analyze: the reasons for the defects are indentified and alternatives are considered.
4. Improvements: the process is changed and double checked for improvements.
5. Control: this ensues that the prcess is not lost over time.

One improvement that can be made is instead of producing the items and then waiting to see customer reaction; whether it will sell or not, or whether the fitting is comfortable or not; they should test out the product on a small group to see their reactions instead of producing all of it and then fixing the problems.