Essay on Supply Chain Management Coca Cola

Inventory/Warehousing

Coca Cola company is an international company reaching out to many countries around the globe. Within its supply chain, the company has been embracing an inventory form of First In First Out (FIFO) to manage its inventory. Therefore, to maintain inventory, Coca Cola orders its raw materials involved in the making of its products such as labels, caps, and bottles. Once products leave the plant, they are stored in the warehouse from where distribution occurs. Over the years, Coca Cola warehousing system has been enhanced through WSPS (Workplace Safety and Prevention Services), which defines the loading and unloading utilities such as lighting systems and power chocks (Williams, 2019). These measures ensure the safe handling of products in a warehouse, the safety of employees, the safety of pedestrians, and hence efficiency in their storage system.

Suppliers

The Coca-Cola company has been diversifying its suppliers through the maximizing of procurement opportunities through establishing partnerships with diverse suppliers. The company has approximately 32,000 suppliers registered in two kinds of supply (Coca-Cola suppliers, 2019). Firstly, there are direct spend suppliers. These suppliers care supplied with ingredients and do the final mixing of syrup with water and sweeteners then package it ready for distribution. Secondly, the indirect spend suppliers deal with maintenance services, IT facility management, and logistics. Coca Cola has partnered with suppliers who provide vending machines, cold drink equipment as well as new technologies aimed at improving their performance. The many suppliers are located in more than 200 countries worldwide, all working to satisfy consumer demands and compete favorably in the global market.

Distribution

Coca Cola has bottling partners assigned to different geographical areas to carry out operations from the production plant to market. Therefore, from the production plant, bottled and canned beverages are transported to sales centers and distribution hubs by use of their commercial vehicles. Once in the distribution centers, the inventory is stored and managed in terms of dispatches to different retailers across regions (The CocaCola Company, 2020). The distribution centers are characterized by zones and subzones of hotspots, where they capture as many retailers and contact points in the market. Each distribution center plays a significant role in the supply chain by executing the push strategy. The zones have heads whose responsibility is to oversee maximum output and uphold the per capita consumption in their zones. Besides providing coca-cola beverages, retailers are equipped with complimentary merchandise such as free coolers. The overall objective is to maximize the sales hence profit through reaching even the remote market.

Other directives

The Coca Cola company has initiated measures over the years to reduce the production cost while maximizing sales to remain competitive in the global market. Such directives involve eliminating the bottler’s supply to stores such as Walmart. The company delivers directly to Walmart as a way of reducing the lead times. The company, however, makes use of local bottlers globally to maximize the supply and push for the completion of the supply chain. However, some issues of transparency have risen on some occasions. Such a case involves some bottlers selling their merchandise in another bottler’s territory. Nevertheless, the company has reached out to huge markets and expanding to the remote areas as they try to attain sales quotas and compete favorably with other companies such as Pepsi.

References

Coca-Cola suppliers. Coca-colahellenic.com. (2019). Retrieved 3 May 2020, from https://coca-colahellenic.com/en/operations/supply-chain/our-suppliers/.

The CocaCola Company. (2020). Coca-Cola System – Our Company | The Coca-Cola Company. Coca-colacompany.com. Retrieved 3 May 2020, from https://www.coca-colacompany.com/company/coca-cola-system.

Williams, S. (2019). Safety First: Safety at Coca Cola – Inside Logistics. Inside Logistics. Retrieved 3 May 2020, from https://www.insidelogistics.ca/opinions/safety-first-safety-coca-cola/.