At Blue Sky, we constantly see companies compensating for supply chain fluctuations by padding inventory safety stock levels, thus adding unnecessary costs to their organization. Many companies are struggling with how to apply lean strategies, which have their roots in manufacturing, to the principles of distribution and fulfillment. While adopting pull based demand techniques is a good starting point, matching your daily demand with your actual fulfillment shipments and analyzing the delta will give a company real, grounded data in which to make significant mid-course corrections, thus enabling companies to operate using lean strategies in the distribution and fulfillment supply chain space. The following article gives some high level details.

Link: Lean: The Antidote to Cost and Variation - 9/1/2007 - Supply Chain Management Review.