Sportsobermeyer

Sport Obermeyer is producing short-life cycle fashion products. However due to overseas production and complexity in global supply chain, lead time of the products are very long. Besides the demand uncertainty is very high; so it is costly to produce products that will not sell in the future, and it is also costly not to produce products that will sell.
To overcome these problems, I would mainly focus on two topics: shortening the lead times and enhancing the forecasting/ordering process. In the initial ordering phase, Sports Obermeyer should order the products with less volatile demands, in other words it should order less risky products. By this way, during the second phase of ordering (After the Las Vegas show), Wally can update the forecasts and more accurate forecasts can be done for volatile products. In short, first production period capacity should be dedicated to safer products, whereas the risky ones are produced in the second phase. Other point is, among those safe products the company should order the cheaper ones first, so that wrong predictions during first phase will be less costly. Also making deals with producers in order to reduce minimum production quantities will enable company to make safer orderings during the first phase.
Besides, colors and materials of the products can be standardized so that for a typical season there will be less type of raw materials. By this way the company can forecast the need in raw materials easier and stock them. Stocking raw materials is better than stocking finished products. This can lead shorter cycle times in production.
Other solution alternatives can be considered are, the company can attempt to obtain marketing info earlier (Wally may talk with the retailers earlier than show); manufacturing lead times can be shortened (closer production areas can be found especially for the second phase production); during peak times more subcontractors can be found