Tesco: Lean Provision

Posted on June 8, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean Provision Is Tesco’s Secret Weapon in Battle with Wal-Mart (annoyingly Yahoo has deleted that web page so I removed the link) (update again here is the LEI press release [the broken link was removed, The Lean Enterprise Institute doesn’t see to employ long term thinking, though that is certainly part of sensible lean thinking]):

Tesco’s lean provision system combines point-of-sale data, cross-dock distribution centers, and frequent deliveries to many stores along “milk-runs” to stock the right items in a range of retail formats. These include Tesco Express convenience stores at gas stations and busy intersections; Tesco Metro (small supermarkets in cities); traditional Tesco supermarkets in cities and suburbs; Tesco Extra (“big box” superstores in suburbs); and Tesco.com for web shoppers.

Great stuff. In fact I would add Tesco to our marketocracy portfolio created as a result of our 10 stock for 10 years post. Why would, (not did)? Martketocracy won’t process purchase request for Tesco. You can view Tesco on Google Finance but you can’t add it to your portfolio.

Tesco is a retailer based in England that is expanding internationally – rapidly. They are moving into the United States in 2007. Warren Buffett picked up over $300 million worth of Tesco stock in March.


The quote above is taken from a Lean Enterprise institute news release. Why do companies repeatedly send out news releases and fail to (or delay) post them to their own web site? I am amazed how often this happens. It wasn’t posted on LEI’s site when I first saw the release but they have posted in now with additional details – good for them, what they have added it valuable. It would be better if they included a web page to link to, including the extra info (not just an adobe acrobat document, including the acrobat document is fine they just should have a web page to link to – now I have to just link to their main news page, which will work but not ideal).

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