Lectura01 INGLES ERICK TRADUCIDO


UNIDAD 1:
¿Qué es logística?
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Fuente: Murphy Jr. Paul, Wood F. Donald. Contemporary Logistics, Chapter 1, New Jersey, 1999. ed., of:
Contemporary physical distribution and logistics.

Sudsy Soap, Inc.

Frank Johnson was outbound logistics manager for Sudsy Soap, Inc. He had held the job for
the past 5 years and had justabout every distribution function well under control. His task
was made easier because shipping patterns and volumes were unchanging routines. The
firmś management boasted that it had a steady share in “a stable market”, although a few
stockholders grumbled that Sudsy Soap had a declining share in a growing market.

The Sudsy Soap plant was in Akron, Ohio. It routinely produced 100,00048-ounce cartons of
powdered dish soap each week. Each carton measured about half a cubic foot, and each
working day, 15 to 20 railcar loads were loaded and shipped to various food chain
warehouses and to a few large grocery brokers. Johnson worked with the marketing staff to
establish prices, so nearly all soap was purchased in railcar-loads lots. Shipments less than a
full carloaddid not occur very often.

Buyers relied on dependable deliveries, and the average length of time it took for a carton of
soap to leave the Sudsy production line and reach a retailerś shelf was 19 days. The best
time was 6 days (to chains distributing in Ohio), and the longest time was 43 days (to retailers
in Alaska and Hawaii).

Sudsy Soapś CEO was worried about thestockholdersś criticism regarding Sudsyś lack of
growth, so he hired a new sales manager, E. Gerard Beever (nicknamed “Eager” since his
college days at a Big Ten university), Beever had a 1-year contract and knew he must
produce. He needed a gimmick.

At his university fraternity reunion he ran into one of his old fraternity roommates, who was now
sales manager for an imported line ofkitchen dishes manufactured in China and distributed by a
firm headquartered in Hong Kong. The product quality was good, but competition was intense. It
was difficult to get even a toehold in the kitchen dinnerware market. Beever and his contact shared
Unidad 1 PN67/DN62
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UNIDAD 1:
¿Qué es logística?
a common plight: There were responsible for increasingmarket shares for products with very little
differentiation from competitors´ products. They both wished they could help each other, but they
could not. The reunion ended and each went home.

The next week, Beever was surprised to receive an e-mail message from his old roommate:

“We propose a tie-in promotion between Sudsy Soap and our dishes. We will supply at no
cost to you100,000 each 12-inch dinner plates, 7-inch pie plates, 9-inch bread and butter
plates, coffee cups, and saucers. Each week you must have a different piece in each
package, starting with dinner plates in week 1, pie plates in week 2, and so on through the
end of week 5. Recommend this be done weeks of October 3, October 10, October 17,
October 24, and October 31 of this year. Timingimportant because national advertising linked
to new television show we are sponsoring. We will give buyers of five packages of Sudsy
Soap, purchased 5 weeks in a row, one free place setting of our dishes. Enough of your
customers will want to complete table settings that they will buy more place settings from our
retailers. Timing crucial. Advise immediately”.

Beever was pleased toreceive the offer but realized a lot of questions had to be answered
before he could recommend that the offer be accepted. He forwarded the message to
Johnson with an added note:

Note attached message offering tie-in with dishes. Dishes are of good quality. What additional
information do we need from dish distributor, and what additional information do you need
before we know...