Warner Bros. Supply Chain Connections

Warner Bros Entertainment Inc is a fully integrated, broad-based entertainment company and a global leader in the creation, production, distribution, licensing and marketing of all forms of entertainment and their related businesses. A Time Warner Company, the fully integrated, broad-based studio is home to one of the most successful collections of brands in the world and stands at the forefront of every aspect of the entertainment industry.

In the early 2000s, the five main divisions in Warner Bros are movies, television shows, animation, home video, and interactive entertainment (video games). Dividing such a large organisation along product lines allowed each business sector to develop product, pricing, and promotion policies, as well as supply chain strategies, independent of one another. But to the distributors and retailers who were Warner Bros’s direct customers, the view was quite different. Each of these customers had to deal with five separate billing and logistics processes – one for each business division. This created a wide range of problems as it did not allow customers to purchase all Warner Bros. products (DVDs and reels from different divisions) together for delivery on the same truck. Some customers went several days without receiving an order, only to have several trucks with Warner Bros orders arriving at the receiving dock at the same time on the same morning. Different product categories were shipped on different trucks with different invoices. The separate pricing and promotion policies, coupled with non-coordinated management of logistics activities across the five business divisions, resulted in different prices per item and order quantities of less-than-full truckloads.

After 2010, and having listened to customer complaints over the years, Warner Bros launched its streamlined logistics initiative. This simplified pricing and promotion structures. But, more importantly, Warner Bros redesigned the information and physical flows across the business divisions so that customers had to deal with only one Warner Bros billing process and one set of logistics processes. Optical discs, hard drives, satellite links, or the internet are the new ways of sharing the products of Warner Bros.

Source: Warner Bros Online

QUESTION:














1.The scenario highlights some of the areas where supply chain professionals have to apply their minds. Most companies will be impacted by some of the longer-term trends in supply chain management. Analyse the major trends in supply management and their impact from a strategic perspective.
2.To keep up with global competition and tap into the abilities of world-class suppliers, Warner Bros. must put in place sourcing systems. Critically analyse the sourcing strategies that can be applied by Warner Bros and the advantages that can accrue from each strategy.