Order Preparation Process Impact on the Replenishment Process on In-Store Operations
Driven by technological developments, people increasingly demand instant access to information, products, and services. For this reason, retail companies must constantly adapt and optimize their operations and structures to remain competitive. DCs’ operations managers have been focused on improving efficiency over the years but not considering efficiency in stores when receiving goods. Stores are expensive locations and must provide more attention to the customer, thus requiring smooth operations. This paper focuses on integrating distribution centers (DC) and in-store operations. The paper studies how different order preparation strategies, namely in the sorting operation and the DC, impact the replenishment process at the store. A multi-methodology is proposed to tackle this problem, including an efficient algorithm to create different order preparation scenarios in the DC and a simulation model to analyze the impact of these scenarios on in-store operations. The performance of each scenario was evaluated according to the filling efficiency of the order totes, the occupation of the system resources, and the time spent performing each operation – picking and shelf replenishment. The results revealed that sorting for larger stores should account for more detail in zone differentiation than for smaller stores. Also, sorting first higher volume items leads to better results. We note that in our methodology, time measurements were empirically determined, and item weight was not considered. Nevertheless, as main implications, retailers can use information about their retail operations and data to guide the design of integrated processes between DC and store, optimize resource usage and plan their operations better
Year of publication: |
[2023]
|
---|---|
Authors: | Cortez, Francisco ; Costa, Pedro ; Relvas, Susana |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Saved in:
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