ABSTRACT
The physical movement and delivery of goods and services to customers is a key objective of supply chain management. The three key aspects of customer service are specification, price and timing. Specification and timing are often measured by the metric, ‘on time in full’ and are the direct result of distribution management. Distribution management is closely linked with the ‘customer intimacy’ model of Treacy and Weisma (1993), but many organisations outsource distribution management to third-party hauliers, thus reducing the frequency of direct customer contact.
