Inventory replenishment in Retail: The Efficient Full Service strategy
Research on retail operations is primarily focused on controlling inventory, but neglects the importance of handling. In the literature, it is shown that at the operational level, labor costs of handling inventory are at least as important as the inventory carrying cost (for a given store size and assortment). In this paper, we introduce the Efficient Full Service strategy and compare it with an inventory replenishment strategy which is currently applied by many retailers. The comparison will not only include service levels and average inventory carried but also the handling time needed. To compare both strategies we will first derive approximations for the key performance indicators and then use simulation based on empirical data for thousands of SKUs at multiple stores from a European retailer to test the approximations. The results show that the improvement potential can be approximated accurately and that, on average, inventory can be reduced with 20％ and the number of handled order lines can be reduced with 15％ while guaranteeing the same target customer service level.
Retail Inventory Replenishment Handling Orderlines Efficient Full Service
Karel van Donselaar Rob Broekmeulen Tom van Woensel Jan Fransoo
Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
国际会议
2007 International Conference on Manufacturing & Service Operations Management(2007制造与服务运作管理国际学术会议)
北京
英文
2007-06-18（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）