Welcome to the September 2013 edition of the ECR Extra Newsletter
With one month to go the ECRA Supplier and Retailer Convention is shaping up to be one of the best yet. A stellar line up of local and international speakers will explore topical and emerging issues within our industry. Suitable for retailers and suppliers working within the FMCG industry.
Program now available to download a copy and to register visit the convention page here.
Australasian major retailers have again committed to providing ECRA with outbound service level data, as well as DIFOD, following Christmas 2013 and January 2014 to facilitate an industry report into this on-shelf availability performance indicator. Availability has typically been 3-5% lower at this time of year than the balance of the year in past years and addressing the gap is a great sales opportunity for retailers and suppliers alike.
Now is the time for discussions to make sure that collaborative plans are in place to provide the best possible scenario for ensuring stock availability into and out of retailer Distribution Centres through the Christmas, New Year and January period.
ECRA has provided industry a toolkit to assist with this process which can be accessed here.
ECRA’s industry working group comprising Nestle, Kimberly-Clark, Sanitarium, Simplot, Cerebos, Lion, Coca-Cola Amatil, Coles, Woolworths, Metcash and GS1 have been working to drive improvement in the order to receipt components of the supply chain throughout 2013.
The group has been focussing on three key initiatives approved by the ECRA Board. Latest progress against these initiatives is:
Multi-Coded Pallets (multiple date/batch codes on a full pallet of a single SKU)
Work is progressing with retailers to establish and commit to a draft standard framework of rules around MCP which will has been put to suppliers and GS1 for review and revision prior to a final framework being delivered at the ECRA convention on 17 October.
The actual conversion to MCP at a company level is a matter for decision between trading partners based on the business impacts to those specific partners. The role of the group is to ensure that any supplier moving to MCP would face the same (standardised) requirements with all 3 major retailers and that these requirements would be supported and stable.
Optimising Advance Shipment Notices (ASN’s)
The group has identified the most prevalent and impactful process issues and exceptions currently precluding optimisation of ASNs and their underlying causes. The key issues will be discussed at the next group meeting with a view to then moving to address priority issues at industry level.
Data Alignment and Integrity
Similarly to ASN Optimisation, the group has identified the priority issues of data misalignment and inaccuracy that would benefit from the development of educational guides for industry to address and the primary underlying causes of these issues. The key issues will be discussed at the next group meeting with a view to then moving to address the priority issues at industry level.
Stay tuned for more information of the group’s progress and output in future issues of ECRA Extra.
ECRA will launch a Display Pallet Toolkit at this year’s ECRA Convention.
Since 2005 the Australian market has hotly debated the merits of the introduction of retail ready packaging (RRP). RRP being the general term used for mechanisms to merchandise product on shelf, on display, on retail store floor or at aisle end.
Recently the retail trade have sought to introduce display pallets into the mix. Display pallets being the term used to describe stock delivered to store and then placed on the shop floor without shelf/display re-stocking requirements.
Having common industry-agreed standards and design principles which are then used by the whole industry is essential to broad scale implementation. In a market Australia’s size, it makes no sense to have a proliferation of alternate display pallet formats as a direct result of minor differences between competing retail organisations. ECRA has worked with leading retailers, suppliers and pallet providers to deliver a streamlined toolkit that goes some ways to addressing this issue.
The logistics cost of implementing display pallets typically sits with the supplier, whilst the immediate in-store benefit of increased speed and reduced labour costs of replenishment sits with the retailer. As an industry we need to consider the broader benefits and understand how we can maximise their advantages. These include:
The ECRA Display Ready Toolkit will be launched at this year’s ECRA Convention.
ECRA’s Loss Prevention Forum consists of a group of companies who have been working together for three years in developing many tools and resources for the FMCG industry to assist in efforts to fight ‘shrinkage’ - primarily focussing on reducing theft of product in store.
Forum members have been working to determine the potential for a research project designed to provide clear understanding of the loss risks associated with new and emerging shopper technologies, with a focus on Self Scanning Checkouts and Mobile Payment technologies in a project - Staying ahead of the Game - managing the impact of technology on loss.
Following a workshop in Sydney attended by industry experts across retail, supply, service and equipment providers and leading academics from Australian National University and NSW University of Technology, the project is progressing quickly through a study into relevant research on self-checkout (SCO) and learnings that will be directly of relevance to the next wave of mobile payment technology in regards exploitation leading to loss.
The intent is to utilise the insights from this research to build a strongly supported view of what will be the key considerations for industry stakeholders in moving to m-payment in regards loss mitigation and report these along with the key insights behind those considerations back to the ECRA LP forum.
Following this phase, if approved by the Board and funded, the project would move to working with the retailers, m-payment technology providers, and suppliers to develop robust approaches to loss mitigation ‘ahead of the game’ through development of best practices supported by guidance and tools.
ECRA recognises the generous sponsorship provided by Checkpoint Solutions which has supported project work to date.
Many tools and guides for industry on the topic of shrinkage and loss prevention can be accessed on the ECRA website here.
TPF is a Forum of the Australian Food and Grocery Council 
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