Chain Management for today’s demand – Case study Seven Eleven in Japan and Sweden

The purpose of the firm is to create value. To do so, a firm has to offer either a unique product/service or a price that is more attractive than its competitors so that customers will pay more than the cost of producing the product/service. It sounds easy to achieve but we all know it is not. In this thesis it should be clear to the reader how the management of the value chain impacts profitability. The company Seven Eleven Japan have considered demand processes in their chain management and are showing higher profitability than their competitors. Using demand processes and shifting the supply chain towards a customer oriented demand approach will have its rewards but it takes a strong alignment with suppliers and distributors for succeeding in a good way. The movement also put additional constraints and focus on the organisation of the company and its management. When a developed chain management is able to integrate the supply chain processes with the demand processes, it gives the company a possible competitive advantage for the future. This thesis has looked at the aspects of a supply chain moving into a more demand related chain management and examined the impact both on the organisational and technology systems in an efficient chain management process. Explaining some of the related conceptions, processes and terms as well as highlighting successful examples is also included in the work. The thesis is conducted by a secondary data investigation of chain management and business literature as well as first hand data on the two companies Seven Eleven Japan and Sweden. The aim of the thesis is to define how the chain management has moved from being a traditional supply chain management to be a more demand focused process as well as to exemplify if and how this has been conducted within two different Seven Eleven companies. A comparison of the two companies´ chain management processes will also be conducted