At 2 a.m. on Black Friday morning they ordered thousands of dollars' worth of appliances from Sears. They got their order confirmation e-mail, went back to bed -- and woke up to find another e-mail telling them their order had been canceled. Then the appliances were delivered, but charged at the regular prices thousands of dollars higher.

Sears said its system sent confirmations before checking inventory but sent the cancellation e-mail almost immediately. That misses the point. It's 2012. Inventory is online. There's no reason for confirming an order before checking inventory. That will take an extra 30 seconds? Five minutes?

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Keywords retail supply chain, supply chain risk management, supply chain management, value chain IT, supply chain solutions