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Last mile empowerment speeds up supply chain flow.
The last mile in supply chains if often critical from the flow point of view. Have we empowered the employees handling it?
I recently went to a leading clothes retailer to exchange an item that was oversize. There was a separate counter for returns. The lady checked the piece and the purchase invoice to issue a credit note. However, she wasn’t authorized to issue it! She had to call the manager for authorisation, which took a significant amount of time.
I asked the manager why the counter lady couldn’t be authorized for issuing credit notes when that’s her sole job and the process is well laid out. He said that the transaction hierarchy and the authorisation hierarchy were different. He did empathize with me that it often causes delays in customer checkouts.
Here is a classic case where a lack of last mile empowerment leads to customer delays. It’s worth checking if the people manning our last mile are properly authorized to take decisions.