In response to the negative impacts a push environment may have on the supply chain, many retailers and suppliers

have adopted a pull strategy for replenishment over the last 10 years. In this environment, the flow of goods is dictated by consumer demand. Instead of pushing product to store shelves and hoping consumers will buy it, businesses allow their inventory levels to be controlled by actual consumption using consumer-demand data. This replenishment strategy is especially important when it comes to products for which consumers have a lot of choices.

Balancing Push and Pull for Optimal Results Why choose between a push or pull approach to replenishment? Marrying the two together can bring out the benefits and minimize the flaws in each approach. Businesses should take a two-step approach to balancing their pull and push replenishment strategies:

Bring inventory into the distribution network based on anticipated consumer demand. Companies should leverage the pull approach to ensure they understand consumer-buying behaviors and that theyre placing demanddriven replenishment orders. Push product out to consumers as fast as possible. Allocation rules that focus on push principles will ensure that product is available to customers as soon as possible to increase the likelihood that it will be purchased at full price.

Balancing push and pull strategies will help retailers increase inventory turns, resulting in a faster return on investment. From a consumer perspective, employing a set of push allocation rules ensures that they will find what theyre looking for when they are shopping. This can help drive up service levels and increase market share for the retailer. Suppliers also benefit from marrying push and pull replenishment strategies especially if they participate in vendor managed inventory programs. They can fulfill demand-driven orders from their retailers, knowing that the product will be pushed out to consumers to purchase. The faster the retailer receives a return on their inventory investment, the faster the supplier gets paid should there be a contingency.

To understand the logic of 'pull systems' I recommend Taichi Ohno's book - Toyota Production System Beyond Large Scale Production which explains how and why the Toyota system works. If you have already applied JIT to your own production processes, you may have discovered the advantages as stock is eliminated and you become more responsive to changeing market conditions. Now imagine JIT applied to your outgoing material (sales) You can supply exactly what the customer wants, when and where required BUT pull systems may only work if the supply network has become lean, and it has taken TOYOTA many years to develop and refine their approach...

Push-Pull Supply Chains: Starting from 90s, apparel corporations all over the world have experienced increasing national and international competition and have initiated horizontal alignment with leaner structure to better address dynamic demand situation in a capacity surplus environment. (9). The shift has taken place in the marketplace from mass products to customized products. In distribution channel, giant retailers like Wall Mart, K-Mart exercise even more power to the supply chain (10). As mentioned in previous sections, the disadvantages of Push and Pull supply chains along with changes in global business landscape have forced companies to look for a new supply chain strategy that takes advantage of the best of both world. This results into a hybrid of the two systems Push-Pull supply chain system. Push-Pull is also termed as synchronous supply chain. In this strategy, the initial stages of the supply chain are operated based on Push system, and the final stages are operated on Pull strategy. The interface between the Pushbased stages and the Pull-based stages is referred as the Push-Pull boundary. Consider the case of Morarjee Brembana Ltd., the leader in 100 percent cotton high-value shirting fabric manufacturer, which out-sources greige yarn based on forecast, and weaves and processes to produce qualities as per actual demand of customers. This implies that supply chain of Morarjee Brembana is divided into two parts. The Push part is the part of the Morarjee supply chain prior to weaving, while the Pull part is the part of the supply chain that starts with weaving and is based on actual customer demand. Indeed, demand for yarn is an aggregation of demand of all finished products that use this component. Since aggregate forecasts are more accurate, uncertainty in component demand is much smaller than uncertainty in finished goods demand. This, of course, leads to safety stock reduction.

Conclusion: Following insights are arrived at from the above discussions:

Design of supply chain configuration depends on clock-speed of organization. Clock-speed of organization is the speed with which the product-portfolio and process change in response to market demand. So, organization having low clock-speed, i.e. with relatively stable demand may have push oriented supply chain. On the other hand, a high clock-speed organization with variable market demand may have pull oriented supply chain.

In the Push portion of a Push-Pull supply chain strategy the focus is on cost while in the Pull portion of the strategy, the focus is on service levels. In a Push-Pull strategy, the Push part is applied to the portion of the supply chain where long-term forecasts have small uncertainty and variability. On the other hand, the Pull part is applied to the portion of the supply chain where uncertainty and variability are high and therefore decisions are made only in response to real demand.

In a Push-Pull supply chain, inventory is minimized as it is designed to eliminate the safety stock by maketo-order and long cycle-time is reduced by pre-arranging/ pre-manufacturing part of the supply. It is found that management of apparel supply chain moves from push to pull and finally to synchronous system. However, all three kinds of supply chain management co-exist in apparel industry as appropriate

supply chain strategy depends on the industry, the company, and individual products. The higher the uncertainty in customer demand, the better to manage that part through Pull strategy

One of the major reasons why supply chain management currently receives so much attention is that information technology enables the shifting of a production and sales business model from "Push type" to "Pull type". Pull-type supply chain management is based on the demand side such as Just-in-Time (JIT) and CRP (Continuous Replenishment Program) or actual demand assigned to later processes. Therefore, unlike the Push-type method it is not Make to Stock, which is based on demand forecast. While inventory is kept to a minimum, products can be supplied with short lead times and at high speed. At the point where "Pull type" starts to supply operations triggered by actual demand, it is like an elevator. An elevator starts when a button is pressed even if there is only one passenger. On the other hand, the "Push type" can be considered as an escalator. An escalator continues to supply (push) regardless of whether there is actual demand (passenger). In addition, "Push type" corresponds to a model for trains, buses, and airplanes for which supply (push) is based on demand forecast by time period and route. There may be various forms between "Push type" and "Pull type" depending on inventory forms of materials, work in progress (WIP), and finished items and how to deal with the actual demand in supply chain management. In the case of sushi, there are boxed sushi sold in a shop, sushi ordered at the counter in a sushi restaurant, and sushi for which an order starts from purchasing live fishes. The place and form which fish for sushi are held in varies from downstream to upstream in a supply chain. An extreme example of a pull-type supply chain sushi restaurant that is unconcerned about lead times is the one that goes fishing when an order is received.