E-commerce as a share of retail continues to grow, accelerated by the pandemic. This is particularly true of the online grocery market. As one of the largest online grocery markets in the world, the UK has many players, but two of the most dynamic are the market leader - Tesco - and Ocado. These two companies have taken markedly different approaches to executing and fulfilling online grocery orders from customers. Tesco has an extensive network of stores and primarily uses them as picking locations to prepare and ship customer orders. Ocado has no retail stores and uses highly automated distribution centers to prepare and ship customer orders. This case describes the UK online grocery market, the two companies and invites students to consider the different approaches: In what ways do they offer advantages to the company and customer and, ultimately, which one is better suited to the UK online grocery market?

By 2021 Zalando had become Europe's largest pure player in online fashion. But the road to success had not always been smooth. Back in 2014, six years after it was founded, the Germany-based company was at a crossroads. With an impending initial public offering (IPO) and investors looking for results, the company was nowhere near being profitable. Zalando realized that to achieve profitability and market leadership, it would have to leverage advanced technology and develop a data-driven supply chain. So, with the innovative spirit of a start-up, it embraced the challenge of building internal digital tools and competencies to drive supply chain efficiencies. The online fashion supply chain had to wrestle with the same challenges of tight margins and high customer expectations familiar to all online retailers. However, the fashion industry faced other unique challenges - high SKU counts, high seasonality, relentless product turnover and frighteningly elevated return rates. By developing proprietary systems and machine learning tools, Zalando developed a responsive, flexible distribution network, trustworthy order promises and a sophisticated, holistic approach to returns management. Through a data-driven journey born out of a crisis, Zalando discovered that these capabilities not only delivered supply chain excellence and pioneering new innovative techniques but also helped to fulfill the company's vision of providing endless choice, seamless convenience and a tailored digital experience to millions of customers across Europe.

Heineken, one the world's largest breweries, had led a long and successful effort to improve the efficiency of its brewery network. For the company COO, this was a source of pride, and also a challenge and an opportunity. Long curious about the potential for digitalizing the supply chain, perhaps this was the natural entry point for the company's supply chain to create a digital transformation program. Heineken could continue its productivity efforts by leveraging digital technologies. Starting by bringing in digital natives from the outside and identifying key internal stakeholders ready to innovate, Heineken began a process of initial pilots where those that were willing could experiment, fail fast, build on successes, and build a digital culture. Through some breakthroughs use cases and financial return prioritization, the company overcame internal resistance, found their way to a model that didn't demand standardization, allowed local innovation and ownership and built a digital community that acted like a tech start-up as much as a brewing company.

This disguised case exercise presents the situation confronting Wistful Cosmetics, a cosmetics company based in Spain. The company, like many others, has been shaken by disruptions to global supply chains. Among the most prominent events are Covid, the Suez Canal blockage by the Ever Given container ship, the global capacity crisis in logistics infrastructure, and unprecedent spikes in demand. The case describes Wistful's context and structure and challenges the reader to respond to three questions: what does the term 'supply chain resilience' mean?, what sorts of events would fall under this definition?, and what steps should Wistful's supply chain director recommend, with what anticipated impacts on the operations and business model.

L'Oréal, the world leader in beauty products, began to rethink its vision for the industry. The world was on the cusp of a digital future full of possibilities. For a company known for its consumer-pleasing beauty products and owner of some the world's most iconic brands, this meant thinking about innovation in a different way. It would no longer mean only providing the best products but also continuously adapting the industry to market needs. Through a combination of goal setting, training and communication, the digital transformation began, first with efforts in marketing, sales and consumer outreach, but supply chain quickly moved to a prominent role in helping address questions about how digitalization would affect the company's products and consumer expectations. Starting with a vision of the CEO, Jean-Paul Agon, the company found itself on a journey to challenge its culture, its approach and even what its value proposition was. Along the way, the supply chain became a force for bringing together the different functions of a large, complex organization to identify and implement new business models in the digital age that cut to the heart of the company's operations.

This disguised case presents the situation confronting the new VP materials supply chain as "HungryPet". Newly arrived in the role, the VP realizes that the ambitious new project to implement an end-to-end planning system neglects the key bottleneck of materials supply between the HungryPet factories and their packaging and ingredient vendors. In response to this situation, the VP conceives a new, innovative cloud solution to improve collaboration between HungryPet and its vendors. The solution would improve and streamline the information flow, saving planner time and propagating supply requirements and confirmations faster. This would protect and enable the expected benefits of the new planning system project. Ideal as an exam question for MBA or Master students, a Teaching Note is provided. This contains a grading guide as well as sample submissions considered exemplary.

This case describes packaging supplier and equipment vendor Tetra Pak and their Digital Transformation Program, detailing why Tetra Pak undertook this effort, how they organized the program, identified and selected which technologies to implement and the steps they took to overcome implementation challenges. The case structures Tetra Pak's voyage around their priorities: Connected Solutions, Advanced Analytics and a Connected Workforce. The emphasis is on the value proposition of Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Digitalization for both Tetra Pak and their customers. Learning objective: The learning objective to illustrate an effective and successful effort develop Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Digitalization capabilities. focusing on the process of identifying technology priorities, establishing the business case in a B2B context, and successfully implementing innovative solutions. The case provides a general introduction to the definition of Industry 4.0 and the key technologies associated with the term.

The online grocery market in the UK is one of the largest in the world. It has many players, but two of the most dynamic are Tesco and Ocado. These two companies have taken markedly different approaches to executing and fulfilling online grocery orders from customers. Tesco has an extensive network of stores and primarily uses these stores as picking locations to prepare and ship customer orders. Ocado has no retail stores, and uses highly automated distribution centers to prepare and ship customer orders. This case describes the UK online grocery market and the two companies; it invites students to consider the differences in the approaches, in which ways they offer advantages to the company and to customers, and ultimately which one is better suited to the UK online grocery market. Learning objective: The objective of this case to develop an appreciation and understanding of the different benefits, costs and constraints of supply chain distribution models. By contrasting two companies that have very different supply chain approaches to competing in the same market, the case leads students to make connections between a company's supply chain strategy and its customer value proposition.

This case depicts an actual, real sequence of events in L'Oreal's Active Cosmetics Supply Chain. The case provides an illustration of the challenges facing large, multi-national organizations in aligning their supply chain planning along several dimensions. The span of the planning is from customers in several markets to the centralized production at the single source factory. The framework for laying out the facts of the case is the senior operations management request to conduct a supply chain planning audit on the Active Cosmetics planning process. The audit request was a direct response to complaints regarding customer service levels by general management. The case begins by setting the narrative that sets the audit in motion. Key actors across the supply chain speak their voices through testimony to the auditor, who serves as protagonist in the story of the case. This vehicle permits the case to express different points of view with objectivity, allowing the reader to consider the validity of each actor's behaviour using that actor's perspective. The case ends with a challenge to the reader to finish what the narrator has started. Having seen the case through his eyes, the reader must now experience the rest of the story as the narrator experienced, and prepare their own analysis and presentation for senior management.