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Innovative Quick Response Programs in Logistics and Supply Chain Management pp 3–22Cite as

The Evolution of Quick Response Programs

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Part of the book series: International Handbooks on Information Systems ((INFOSYS))

Abstract

In companies’ constant quest to find ways to maintain or improve customer service levels while simultaneously reducing their investment in inventory, apparel companies in the mid-1980s focused on the problem of long lead times between product design and availability in retail stores. They developed the strategy of quick response (QR) to shorten this lead time and to create a supply chain that was more responsive to customers’ demand for fashion items. In this chapter we define QR programs, discuss the origins of these programs in the apparel industry, and compare QR with subsequently developed methods of inventory control widely used across industries.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In fact, Leed’s operates a bonded warehouse so that it can avoid paying the import duties on the blank products all at once at the time of import. The bonded warehouse allows Leed’s to incur the duty expense at the time at which the individual items are extracted from the facility to fill a customer’s order.

  2. 2.

    Interestingly, experiments by Steckel et al. (2004) show that the performance of systems with particular demand patterns may actually degrade through the sharing of POS sales data because the orders placed by downstream customers are more relevant to inventory decisions in these certain environments.

  3. 3.

    Of course, process improvements that lead to higher levels of product or service quality can be valuable even for non-bottleneck activities. Thus, it is important that managers do not ignore the impact of these non-bottleneck activities completely. As the flow time for the bottleneck activities decreases, other activities will inevitably become new bottlenecks and will deserve the attention of flow time reduction efforts.

  4. 4.

    The individual-rationality constraint, also known as the participation constraint, ensures that each party realizes at least a minimum required benefit from participating in a given activity (Tirole 1988). In this case, the minimum required benefit is the manufacturer’s expected profit from a traditional channel that does not utilize a QR strategy.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Palumbo and Donahue Schools of Business, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15282-0180, USA

    Matthew J. Drake

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  1. Matthew J. Drake
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  2. Kathryn A. Marley
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Correspondence to Matthew J. Drake .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Logistics & Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Yuk Choi Road 11, Kowloon, Hung Hom, Hong Kong/PR China

    T. C. Edwin Cheng

  2. Fac. Applied Science & Textiles, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong/PR China

    Tsan-Ming Choi

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Drake, M.J., Marley, K.A. (2010). The Evolution of Quick Response Programs. In: Cheng, T., Choi, TM. (eds) Innovative Quick Response Programs in Logistics and Supply Chain Management. International Handbooks on Information Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-04313-0_1

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