This document discusses West Marine's efforts to improve its supply chain management. It summarizes how West Marine struggled after acquiring E&B Marine, with sales falling and out-of-stock levels rising. West Marine then implemented several changes, including adopting CPFR (Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment) with key vendors, standardizing EDI transfers, and creating cross-functional category management teams. These efforts led to improved forecasting accuracy and in-stock rates. The document concludes with recommendations for West Marine to consider vendor and SKU rationalization if acquiring BoatU.S., or developing unique assortments if maintaining dual brands, given the complexity of integrating both companies' 50,000 SK

1. West Marine:
Driving Growth through Shipshape
Supply Chain Management
Case Study Solution
Presented By:
Arun Kabra 11BM60046
Chandra Veer S Dulawat 11BM60030
Partha Pratim 11BM60041
Sumit Pal Singh 11BM60048

2. About West Marine
 Started in 1975 in Palo Alto, California by
Randy Repass
 252 stores accounting for 82 % of total
business
 18 % sales through Internet and catalog
orders, which had 50,000 SKUs
 Market share of 7.3 % with 440 million in
sales in the boating industry

3. West Marine Acquisition of E & B
Consequences:
◦ Sales fell by almost 8 %
◦ Peak-season out-of-stock levels rose more than
12%
Major Challenge:
◦ Infrastructure of West Marine was not strong
enough to support an organisation almost
doubled its size

4. West Marine Acquisition of E & B
Continued
 Focus Points for Change:
◦ Leadership – The Captain selects his
Crew
 Key players changed by veterans in the
industry in case business in failing
 More experienced people in the management
team
◦ Strategy – New Navigation Rules
 Each executive was given the general mandate
to turn around his respective function
 outlined a series of specific financial goals
(company wide performance indicators)

5. West Marine Acquisition of E & B
Continued
◦ People and Culture – All Aboard
 Cultural change drive on the idea of providing
“better than expected customer service”.
 Significant effort was put in redefining roles, the
silos mentality was totally abandoned and new
transparent communication was established.
◦ Systems and Processes – Regain an
Even Keel
 New management team started attacking every
process by reviewing every process and
reinventing all of the systems.

6. About CPFR
 Collaborative Planning Forecasting and
Replenishment
 Development of a single, shared forecast
supporting joint plans of trading partners in supply
chain and driving their replenishment activities.
 Included systematic identification of exceptions,
clear performance measures and monetizing of
risks.

7. CPFR at West Marine
The key drivers to customer sales forecasts were
 Base annual forecasts
 Seasonal selling curves or “profiles”
 Ranking or service levels for items
 Promotional changes
 Assortment changes
In their business model, sales from non-stocking
locations were also a significant driver.

8. Store-DC link
 West Marine elected to develop a custom
integration solution to link its store and DC level
replenishment platforms. West Marine
implemented a successful, robust linkage between
the point-of-sale and DC systems that maximized
automation and mass-maintenance procedures,
thereby creating new user interfaces that enhanced
the user’s view of how products performed across
the network.
 West Marine implemented JDA’s Intellectual
seasonal profiling package to address the
challenge of accomplishing accurate profiling.

9. West Marine – Trading
Partners
 Electronic data interchange (EDI) standardized
electronic transfer of structured information
between trading partners to increase productivity,
reduce human error, and drive down costs.
 West Marine worked with NMMA to establish this
as the EDI standard in the marine industry with the
hope of more rapidly stimulating its adoption.
 West Marine also launched a significant data
clean-up effort, by evaluating one SKU at a time.

10. With these improvements, West Marine created
accurate 52-week forecasts of supplier orders of all
of its products with a minimum of manual
intervention. Historical sales data was used to
generate the baseline forecast, which was made
richer by taking into account:
 Seasonal (geographic based) profiles,
 Product rank (based on anticipated sales volume
and gross margin), and
 Scheduled promotions (fliers, special displays in
the stores, and other promotional activities).
 These forecasts were updates every 24-hours.

11. Internal Improvements
 To support this new forecasting and replenishment
approach, West Marine agreed to implement a
category management approach that would drive
employees in the merchandising and planning and
replenishment departments to perform as an
integrated unit.
 They divided West Marine’s products into 24 distinct
product clusters, and assigned a category
manager and an assistant category manager
from the merchandising group to each one.
 A merchandise planner and a replenishment
analyst were assigned from the planning and
replenishment department.
 These four individuals were collocated in a team
“pod” and were charged with working together.

12. ROLES
 Category Manager and Assistant: responsible for
choosing the items that the company would stock,
assigning a channel(s) to each product, negotiating
vendor agreements, determining price, margin, and
volume goals, developing promotion strategies,
and managing the on-going vendor relationships.
 Merchandise Planner: acted as “supply chain
captain”, cutting purchase orders, monitoring
shipments and fill rates, resolving problems, and
coordinating all aspects of supply chain from the
vendor to the DC.

13.  Replenishment Analyst: worked closely with the
merchandise planner, but focused on those
aspects of the supply chain related to getting the
product form the DC to the stores. S/he entered
and monitored the forecasts, interfaced with the
stores to ensure that they got what products they
needed and managed special requests from the
stores.
 The new category teams also worked closely with
assortment planning, visual merchandising and
marketing. The assortment planning group helped
ensure that each unique store had the right mix of
products to maximize sales and profitability in the
market.

14. CPFR: Pilot at West Marine
Collaboration with 150 vendors including 350 EDI
partners.
 In-stock rates at stores: 96%
 Forecast Accuracy: 85%
 On-time shipping: 30%
Improved Forecast for shipping and receiving
activities at DC resulting in marriage of
replenishment and physical logistics at DC.

15. Recommendations for Takeover
of BoatU.S.
Branding and Integration Strategy:
 A vendor and SKU Rationalization Effort would be
needed, when the company is going for merging
the two into a single brand West Marine.
 But if it wants to go with Dual-Branding Strategy
and decides to maintain the BoatU.S. brand, the
company has to develop a more diverse product
base and more unique assortments than ever
before.
 It also needs to take care of the integration of the
replenishment activities because these are mostly
manual processes in case of BoatU.S.

16. Recommendations for Takeover
of BoatU.S. Continued
 Overall complexity involved in the supply chain
integration of both companies is high since both
offered 50,000 SKUs via stores, internet and
catalogs.
 This is one of the most critical factor as West
Marine cannot afford to have a repeat of the Supply
Chain breakdown, as happened in the case of
previous acquisition of E&B Marine.
 Thus, the experience gained from the CPFR needs
to be used and applied for the successful
integration of two companies.

17. THANK YOU