Tesco upgrades supply chain systems

Modernisation paves the way for entry into US market

Tesco is to upgrade its supply chain systems

Supermarket giant Tesco is to upgrade its supply chain management systems to create a common model across all countries and support its move into the US market.

Tesco’s bespoke Continuous Replenishment application monitors and controls its in-store inventory but it is updating it for rollout in its US data centre.

Tesco is looking to open its first US shop in California later this year and the retailer wants to future proof its supply chain applications.

Tesco adopts a common operating model across its businesses worldwide, allowing it to deploy and support key systems like supply chain and replenishment applications when it expands into new countries.

The modernised application will be deployed in all of Tesco’s data centres across the world and create cost savings as Tesco will be able to use existing servers.

‘Elements of our common operating model are already in place and benefiting some of our businesses,’ said Tesco group IT director Colin Cobain. ‘The modernisation will help us meet our goal of opening our first store in 2007.’

Tesco announced plans to open in the US, where the market is worth $600bn a year and expected to expand by 40 per cent in five years.

This means it is crucial that its supply chain operations are ready and modernised in time to take advantage of this projected growth, said Cobain.

Micro Focus will modernise and extend Tesco’s Continuous Replenishment (CR) application to run on the latest IBM System p servers, which run AIX Unix. It will also run on its IBM System z mainframe running z/OS.

Micro Focus software will also be used to create a port for the Cobol-based CR application to AIX. This will allow Tesco to maintain a single source stream for both the mainframe and Unix versions of the application.

Freeform Dynamics analyst Martin Atherton says Tesco is readying its infrastructure for global expansion and enabling it to address changes more effectively as they occur.

‘Tesco has seen the value in enabling its broader, global systems first, which will make the job of extracting and using information easier and more efficient,’ he said.

‘Tesco is getting its house in order before it gets to grips with dealing with information at a local level. Being able to leverage a common model across multiple countries will allow Tesco to ‘think globally and act locally’.'