A lean approach for reducing inventory for a Mexican convenience store network

Abstract

The Lean Manufacturing approach for waste elimination can be applied in all sorts of operations. In this work this approach is adapted and applied for the reduction of inventory in the network of convenience stores of the leading Mexican company in this sector. The work describes the efforts devoted to achieve such objective in the store network served by the Distribution Center (DC) of San Martin located in Mexico City (CDMX). The initiatives considered are the increase of store inventory replenishment frequency and the reduction of the delivery time from the DC to the stores. The use of lean tools and mathematical models for defining replenishment frequencies and delivery routes is described. The description of expected results and those of a pilot program are given.