LOG201: Fashion Brand H&M is a Swedish Multinational Retailer Whose Biggest Markets are in Britain, Germany and the United States: Supply Chain Management Assignment, SUSS, Singapore

Question 1

Fashion brand H&M is a Swedish multinational retailer whose biggest markets are in Britain, Germany and the United States. It has about 4,000 stores in the world and is one of the most recognisable brands in the fashion industry.

Through the years, H&M has experienced changing consumer needs. Suppose H&M has identified that there is a growing preference for personalised design among its customers and they want to alter their network design to cope with this trend. Recommend a suitable network design for H&M to effectively cope with this trend. Your discussion should include the following:

• A diagram of your recommended distribution network design, including last-mile transport design, for H&M. Briefly explain how your recommended design works.
• Discuss the implications of your recommended network design on decisions related to facilities, inventory management and information infrastructure.
• Determine how your recommended design would affect demand forecasting at H&M.Question 2

CP Displays (CP) manufactures TV panels to serve demand in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and South America. Potential sites for its manufacturing plants have been identified in Japan, Germany, Canada and Brazil. The capacity of the plant in each site is shown in Table

1. The demand from each region and the variable costs (production and shipping costs) at the sites are also shown in Table 1. CP also has to pay import duties for the shipments to the different regions. Use the import duty rates shown in Table 2 for the different regions. Assume the following:

– At most one plant to be built in each country (Japan, Germany, Canada and Brazil)
– Import duty is calculated based on the production and shipping costs
– Import duty is waived for TV panels shipped within the same region; no import duties are charged for shipments from:

• Japan to Asia
• Germany to Europe
• Canada to North America
• Brazil to South America

Table 1: Transportation, Demand, Capacity and Production Costs for CP

Table 2: Import Duty Rates

Compute where CP should build its manufacturing plants if it wants to minimise total cost.

Briefly state how the network should be structured. Please also include the formulation of the objective function, constraints and decision variables. Submit your solved excel file separately.

Your report (excluding the cover page, tables, references and appendices) should not exceed 1,500 words. Please do not retype the questions in your report.