Automation of periodic replenishment process for fashionable product

Abstract: The thesis depicted in this report was the subject of my internship at Dior Haute Couture in Paris. I was a member of the supply chain team and I was working on the women shoes product. The aim was to develop the automation of the replenishment of the stores in the world. As a planner for Europe and the United States, I was in strong interaction with the buyers who were following specific stores and who have strong knowledge about the product. The product required a well understanding of the trend of the market and a significant reactivity to cope with the hazards of the of the fashion industry in the luxury world. The purpose to reach was double: first the automation model should reduce time of the planner job to replenish the stores and secondly the application should give more clarity on the goals decided on the market. Along the development, I have always kept in mind the guarantee of the replenishment quality and the simplification of the planner job.The first chapter of this thesis will refer to the start of my investigation to apply a relevant model to my study case: the definition of the project and a state of art of the different methods to supply a store found in the literature. In the second chapter I will explain the choices I did for the automation of replenishment system. The project was very specific to the company and depends a lot on the intrinsic characteristics of the product. As they were luxury products, the goal was to deliver appropriate grid sizes of women shoes to stores to make the best sales as possible with the less level of stock. The project takes also into account the quality issues to face and the approximations of the production planning.By building this model, it appears that the criteria taken on could be used for wider applications. As a consequence, in the last chapter, I will deal with a new way to calculate stock out rate indicators. The global aim was again to clarify the planner job and to enable him to warn the buyer about critical stocks in the stores.