1. Just in time
Welcome to this case study on supply chains. I am Agata, and together we will solve some real-life business challenges using Tableau.
Let’s get started.
2. Case study: your Tableau skills meet real life case!
Case studies are a great follow-up to our DataCamp courses.
You can test your skills and gain confidence through real-life cases, working with just a little guidance.
Ideally, you already completed some of our Tableau courses, as some base knowledge is required.
3. What is supply chain?
Before we start, let’s first define the supply chain. It is a flow of processes involved in producing, sourcing, and distributing products from suppliers or manufacturers to clients.
By optimizing the performance of specific supply chain steps depicted here, companies can save money, generate more profit and keep the customers happy.
Lastly, let’s not forget various partners in the supply chain, such as producers, suppliers, or various service providers.
In general, we can distinguish a supply chain where a company is also processing raw materials into actual resalable goods or
4. Retail supply chain
a retail supply chain, where the company purchases ready goods from various suppliers and resells them to the final customer.
In such a supply chain, there is no dependency on, for example, the availability of raw materials, but there are dependencies on suppliers and their supply chains.
5. Potential retail supply chain problems - inventory
Let’s closely study various supply chain challenges, beginning with the inventory. Have you heard of the concept of “Just in time”?
Imagine you run a tiny pizzeria with a small wooden oven, a flat surface to prepare the pizzas, a tiny fridge, and some storage space for fresh produce. You are just getting started, and if you don't manage your stock and allow the delivery of 100 kg of tomatoes, you might run the risk of not selling enough pizzas before your tomato inventory expires. So - you risk losses.
6. Potential retail supply chain problems - inventory
You fine-tune your supply chain by controlling the timeliness of your stock deliveries and synchronizing it with the tempo of your sales.
On the other hand, challenges can also occur if we do not hold enough stock and run into delayed order dispatch or order cancellations by impatient customers.
Just-in-time depicts an ideal situation when there is no delay in sales due to a lack of inventory and no spoilage due to overstock.
7. Potential retail supply chain problems - shipments
But the inventory is not the only challenge to tackle. Disruptions in the shipment of goods between the various steps in the supply chain can also ruin our business.
Did you know that around 80% of the world’s goods are transported by sea? The increases in freight rates or the increasing traffic and congestion of various seaways, such as the 2021 Suez Canal blockage, inevitably generate longer lead times, which can then be even more negatively impacted by unreliable last-mile delivery (so the final delivery to the customer) if, for example, local postal or courier services are on strike.
8. Ready for the challenge? Meet our dataset!
Lots of challenges, but here comes your skillset! You will investigate a rich dataset consisting of an order and shipment fact file (here on the left), which can be linked to the inventory file, informing us about the stock and storage cost per month.
The last file, the fulfillment file, tells us how many days it typically takes to refill the stock of a specific product.
You can find a detailed overview of all the fields on the course landing page.
9. Our final deliverables!
Are you excited to get started? Throughout this case study, you will develop two insightful dashboards similar to the ones on the screen!
10. Let's practice!
Let’s get started!