Reference no: EM133320388

Case Study: Barbie sells electric barbeque grills and five models of 'barbies' nationally. Brisbane Barbie is a well-established business that maintains a single warehouse from which it supplies its distributors. Despite the company's name, the place where the business produces flat top and wheeled 'trolley' barbeque sets is in a small town, not Brisbane, and many workers have been with the company for many years. Gareth Wilson, the company president and general manager said, "Yes, I know the demand for these barbies is seasonal, but the 'inventory boys' will just have to deal with it. On an annual basis, our output matches sales." Today, inventory is handled by a system of four warehouses. There is a central warehouse located near the plant that supplies some customers directly, and three regional warehouses: two on the east coast and one in Western Australia. The vice president of sales, Hannah Hill, is becoming increasingly frustrated with the inventory system. She points to increasing complaints from regional sales managers about poor customer service, as customers' orders go unfilled and are late, apparently due to shortages at regional warehouses. Regional warehouse managers have responded by increasing their order sizes from the main warehouse, maintaining a larger amount of safety stock. This has resulted in increasing inventory holding costs, but it has not eliminated the problem. According to the manager of the regional warehouses, orders to the main warehouse are not being shipped, or when they are, they are in smaller quantities than requested. The manager of the main warehouse, Helen Pham, says her policy is to give preference to "filling direct orders from customers rather than warehouse orders that might simply reflect a warehouse trying to replenish its safety stock. And besides, I never know when I will get hit with an order from one of the regional warehouses. I guess they think we have an unlimited supply. I thought when we added the warehouses, we would just divide our inventory among the warehouses, and everything would be okay." Hannah Hill also mentioned that on more than one occasion she found that items were out of stock at one regional warehouse but were in ample supply in at least one other regional warehouse.

Question: Theres complaints about poor customer service. Identify 4 problems experienced by brisbane barbie.