Two words sum up Zara's competitive advantage: Fast and efficient. Zara's first CEO, Jos Mar Castellano R, established a clear business idea that represents all the efforts of Zara management today: "Linking customer demand to manufacturing and linking manufacturing to distribution." » Basically, Mr. Castellano wanted all critical elements of Zara's supply chain (SC) to be interconnected and share information in real time. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Decentralizing Decision Making. Zara management understands its market well. Their clientele was young, fashion conscious, and their tastes in clothing were changing rapidly. In order to satisfy their market, clothing lines had to go from concept to shelf extremely quickly before the hype around a style faded. Their average lead time was approximately three weeks with a 75% stock change every three weeks, compared to two months for their competitors' design and manufacturing. This time frame allows Zara to respond more quickly than anyone else to the changing and predictable tastes of its customers. Zara was able to achieve this rapid manufacturing by empowering store managers to identify the latest trends that would sell in their stores rather than letting a central headquarters separate from their markets decide for them. The groups called “advertisers” were very careful about what clothing would be designed and produced. These “sales” teams consisted of two designers and two product managers, who had the autonomy to purchase materials, place production orders, and set prices. In addition to the "sales" teams, there was another group called store product managers, who worked closely with the product teams and served as the main interface between Zara stores and Zara's main headquarters in La Coru. This team traveled extensively and interacted with store managers and their markets to understand what types of clothing are selling and what types of clothing would sell. Decisions made by these teams were rarely reviewed because it would compromise business speed and decentralized decision-making. Zara's Information Technology Zara's IT lives up to the business strategy of speed and decentralization of decision-making. Each information system (IS) of the Inditex company is unique and simple. There are four main levels or corporate areas within Zara: La Coru (headquarters), factories, distribution centers (DCs) and stores. Each of these levels has some type of internally developed application or system that supports a business process simply, quickly and efficiently. The corporate office uses in-house developed applications to support operations. La Coru's systems used critical decision attributes that could have a direct impact on sales. The first application consisted of the repair and distribution of offers/requests. This system receives orders from all stores in the world and distributes them via the Internet. The second application compares the aggregated order to on-hand inventory, highlights where supply and demand are out of balance, and executes business decisions on how to allocate products. The last application made it possible to keep track of the “theoretical inventory”. It was theoretical because.