Retail industry adopting change : adaptation: automation: benefits

This thesis contains the research on the key change adoptive agents/forces and the solu-tions to the world‟s rapidly growing and one of the most consumer facing industry. The trillions worth retail industries are undergoing the period of important restructuring inter-nally and externally. The author highlights the key factors that force the retail industry to adopt modern technologies for their daily business processes in order to be more competi-tive. The factors have been viewed in two perspectives 1-Internal (store/warehouse man-agement, human capital) and 2-Externally (customers, suppliers). In response of these factors, the research presents state of the art 1-Self Checkout System 2-RFID 3-Cloud Computing as tested and proven technologies that has been observed and implemented in the “Future Stores” by big box retailers. Finally the author discusses the tangible and in-tangible benefits to the retail business derived from the implementation of mentioned technologies. To meet the research demands, the writer constructs a theoretical frame-work by using the descriptive and exploratory research method as a secondary resource; while empirical research was conducted through semi structured phone interviews with experts from the retail industry and the retail management consultants. The results derived from theoretical study and empirical research show that the use of updated retail management technologies like Self-checkout System, RFID and Cloud Computing can reduce cost and management pain fairly. While the bigger impact of such adoptions is to build a seamless supply chain, customer experience management and business intelligence system; which plays a vital role to prolong the competitiveness and life cycle of retail business against future economic setbacks

A Dynamic Pricing Model for Coordinated Sales and Operations

Recent years have seen advances in research and management practice in the area of pricing, and particularly in dynamic pricing and revenue management. At the same time, researchers and managers have made dramatic improvements in operations and supply chain management. The interactions between pricing and operations/supply chain performance, however, are not as well understood. In this paper, we examine this linkage by developing a deterministic, finite-horizon dynamic programming model that captures a price/demand effect as well as a stockpiling/consumption effect – price and market stockpile influence demand, demand influences consumption, and consumption influences the market stockpile. The decision variable is the unit sales price in each period. Through the market stockpile, pricing decisions in a given period explicitly depend on decisions in prior periods. Traditional operations models typically assume exogenous demand, thereby ignoring some of the market dynamics. Herein, we model endogenous demand, and we develop analytical insights into the nature of optimal prices and promotions. We develop conditions under which the optimal prices converge to a constant. In other words, price promotion is suboptimal. We also analytically and numerically illustrate cases where the optimal prices vary over time. In particular, we show that price dynamics may be driven by both (a) revenue effects, due to nonlinear market responses to prices and/or inventory, and (b) cost effects, due to economies of scale in operations. The paper concludes with a discussion of directions for future research

An Integrated Retail Supply Chain Risk Management Framework: A System Thinking Approach

It is often taken for granted that the right products will be available to buy in retail outlets seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. Consumer perception is that of a simple service requirement, but the reality is a complex, time sensitive system - the retail supply chain (RSC). Due to short product life-cycles with uncertain supply and demand behaviour, the RSC faces many challenges and is very vulnerable to disruptions. In addition, external risk events such as BREXIT, extreme weather, the financial crisis, and terror attacks mean there is a need for effective RSC risk management (RSCRM) processes within organisations. Literature shows that although there is an increasing amount of research in RSCRM, it is highly theoretical with limited empirical evidence or applied methodologies. With an active enthusiasm coming from industry practitioners for RSCRM methodologies and support solutions, the RSCRM research community have acknowledged that the main issue for future research is not tools and techniques, but collaborative RSC system wide implementation. The implementation of a cross-organisational initiative such as RSCRM is a very complex task that requires real-world frameworks for real-world practitioners. Therefore, this research study attempts to explore the business requirements for developing a three-stage integrated RSCRM framework that will encourage extended RSC collaboration. While focusing on the practitioner requirements of RSCRM projects and inspired by the laws of Thermodynamics and the philosophy of System Thinking, in stage one a conceptual reference model, The �6 Coefficient, was developed building on the formative work of supply chain excellence and business process management. The �6 Coefficient reference model has been intricately designed to bridge the theoretical gap between practitioner and researcher with the aim of ensuring practitioner confidence in partaking in a complex business process project. Stage two focused on a need for a standardised vocabulary, and through the SCOR11 reference guide, acts as a calibration point for the integrated framework, ensuring easy transfer and application within supply chain industries. In their design, stages one and two are perfect complements to the final stage of the integrated framework, a risk assessment toolbox based on a Hybrid Simulation Study capable of monitoring the disruptive behaviour of a multi-echelon RSC from both a macro and micro level using the techniques of System Dynamics (SD) and Discrete Event Simulation (DES) modelling respectively. Empirically validated through an embedded mixed methods case study, results of the integrated framework application are very encouraging. The first phase, the secondary exploratory study, gained valuable empirical evidence of the barriers to successfully implementing a complex business project and also validated using simulation as an effective risk assessment tool. Results showed certain high-risk order policy decisions could potentially reduce total costs (TC) by over 55% and reduce delivery times by 3 days. The use of the �6 Coefficient as the communication/consultation phase of the primary RSCRM case study was hugely influential on the success of the overall hybrid simulation study development and application, with significant increase in both practitioner and researcher confidence in running an RSCRM project. This was evident in the results of the hybrid model’s macro and micro assessment of the RSC. SD results effectively monitored the behaviour of the RSC under important disruptive risks, showing delayed effects to promotions and knowledge loss resulted in a bullwhip effect pattern upstream with the FMCG manufacturer’s TC increasing by as much as €50m. The DES analysis, focusing on the NDC function of the RSC also showed results of TC sensitivity to order behaviour from retailers, although an optimisation based risk treatment has reduced TC by 30%. Future research includes a global empirical validation of the �6 Coefficient and enhancement of the application of thermodynamic laws in business process management. The industry calibration capabilities of the integrated framework application of the integrated framework will also be extensively tested

Delivering Value: Best Practices for Alternative Models of Sustainable Regional Food Distribution in Canada

Canadian food producers with annual gross receipts totaling less than $1 million CAD and small to medium-sized farms find it difficult to compete with the conventional food system on price and availability (Stott et al., 2014). The lack of suitable distribution services and sales channels to urban markets (population greater than 100,000 persons) within their region has been a barrier for these producers (Hild, 2009). As a result, such producers are partially or fully excluded from the conventional supply chain and access to local food options is hampered. In the province of British Columbia, as elsewhere in Canada, local producers are challenged to meet the increase in demand for locally and sustainably produced food (Sott et al., 2014b). Challenges in managing the aggregation, marketing and distribution (purchase, storage, transportation and resale) while also scaling up production create additional costs, concern for preservation of producer identity and the potential for increased logistical complexity (Deloitte, 2013). Chefs, consumers, retailers and processors have indicated that the gap in distribution is a barrier to buying local food (Stott et al., 2014b). Analysis of the marketing and distribution activities of successful sustainably-minded regional distribution networks in British Columbia reveal shared best practices that deliver value to producer, buyer and consumer. Primary research supported the following best practices found in secondary literature: Product quality is defined by consumers and paramount to meeting purchase expectations; product differentiation adds value, increasing price premiums for all those involved in its trade; distribution & logistics supports are necessary for producers; and fair & stable pricing enables long-range sales planning and reduces switching costs

Business model innovation reshaping the grocery retail

Analisi dell'evoluzione portata nell'ambito del business modelope

Proceedings of the 2nd African Operations Management Conference: Competitive Operations Management for Driving Automation in Africa Forward

Conference proceedingsColleges of Economic and Management Science

An integrated framework for improving supply chain performance

In 2009, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants [Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, (2009). Global SCM excellence study., p.5.] reported that 40% of 234 companies had the wrong priorities in regard to efficiency vs. responsiveness. In 2014, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) [PwC and APICS, Sustainable supply chains: Making value the priority 2014] found that 76% of 500 supply chain executives identified sustainability as an important aspect of their supply chain. The results highlight the importance of achieving consistency between customer expectations, in terms of cost and service level, and supply chain performance in today’s competitive business environment. Despite this, however, no integrated supply chain design framework exists to control majority of the important functions related to supply chain strategy, structure, process and performance. The literature review showed that simulation is rarely considered at the strategic level, but the research experiments highlighted a number of ways in which simulation tools might be useful at this level, such as exploring the impact of strategic fit and decoupling points, and assessing different supply chain network configurations and policies. This research contributes to knowledge by designing and developing a framework that integrates strategy, process and resources, and allows the use of simulation tools to consider the three dimensions of efficiency, responsiveness and sustainability concurrently during the design process. The proposed framework is validated using a hypothetical supply chain network. Simulation allows performance to be assessed under a range of scenarios. The simulation experiments showed that under the suggested policies, efficiency improved from 25.38% to 30.58% and responsiveness rose from 18.37% to 32.78%. However, they also indicated that while policies oriented towards improving responsiveness had a positive impact on sustainability, those oriented towards improving efficiency had a negative impact. The significance of the research lies in its development of a supply chain design framework that could assist companies in achieving the optimum configuration of supply chain resources, thereby helping them reduce inventory, lower costs, enhance responsiveness and improve strategic focus in terms of design, execution and capital investments