Kantine Vending Machine LLC Inventory Optimization

Kantine Vending LLC is a local vending machine company in Conyers, GA. In their current state they have 4 machines and are looking to expand in the future. They hold over 70 different products in stock. The idea of the project began when Kantine received customer complaints of purchasing expired products from one of the machines. Our team then sought to improve the company’s inventory system to minimize expired product, reduce waste, improve product flow, and lower stocking times. To achieve these goals, we looked to use methods and ideologies such as lean warehousing, 5s, First in First out (FIFO), inventory target points, EOQ, and inventory management software. To start we divided the work into three main categories: Inventory management software, warehouse organization, and inventory optimization. The first step was the inventory managements system and barcode scanner. We then developed a simple inventory database using Microsoft Access and a barcode scanner. This allows Kantine to scan products in and out and gives an exact overview of current total inventory. For the warehouse we expanded storage capacity and organized the warehouse with products arranged in the order in which they are stocked in the machines. We also utilized 5s principles by ensuring every item had a labeled location on the shelf as well as integrated barcodes on the shelves themselves to ease the use of the inventory software. The chips were given a simple Fifo loading system with new product being placed in the back pushing older products forward to be stocked. We then built upon this by calculating our inventory target levels. Our team gathered over a months’ worth of data for the demand of each product by utilizing the sales report from the all the machines. By using the demand of each product, we could calculate our inventory minimums and maximums as well as our reorder point. We also utilized the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) formula to determine how much of each product to purchase when inventory levels reached our reorder point. With these calculations we can ensure products are in stock to meet our demand as well as reduce waste. With the improvements to the warehouse and the introduction of an inventory database the process of stocking the machines and monitoring inventory levels was simplified. The results of our efforts can be seen in the improvement to the time spent reordering products and restocking inventory. The combination of the introduction of an inventory database, and the inventory calculations combined with a decrease in purchase order frequency has resulted in a 35% monthly reduction in time required to place purchase orders from the supplier. Similarly, the reorganization of the warehouse through 5S and FIFO has resulted in a 20% decrease in time required to stock inventory. Through the use of inventory target points and EOQ we can hope to see a reduction in product waste and perhaps even a decrease in cost in the long term. We can also expect to see a reduction in product outage. Overall, Kantine Vending LLC’s inventory management system is now more robust, efficient, and reliable than eve

Coping with demand volatility in retail pharmacies with the aid of big data exploration

Data management tools and analytics have provided managers with the opportunity to contemplate inventory performance as an ongoing activity by no longer examining only data agglomerated from ERP systems, but also, considering internet information derived from customers' online buying behaviour. The realisation of this complex relationship has increased interest in business intelligence through data and text mining of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data, commonly referred to as "big data" to uncover underlying patterns which might explain customer behaviour and improve the response to demand volatility. This paper explores how sales structured data can be used in conjunction with non-structured customer data to improve inventory management either in terms of forecasting or treating some inventory as "top-selling" based on specific customer tendency to acquire more information through the internet. A medical condition is considered - namely pain - by examining 129 weeks of sales data regarding analgesics and information seeking data by customers through Google, online newspapers and YouTube. In order to facilitate our study we consider a VARX model with non-structured data as exogenous to obtain the best estimation and we perform tests against several univariate models in terms of best fit performance and forecasting

Workflow Analysis, Scheduling, and Chance Constraint Models in Community Pharmacy Operations

Community pharmacy networks provide most of the US population's prescribed medication, but not picking up the medication or using it improperly can lead to problems such as medication non-adherence and medication misuse. This research focuses on improving community pharmacy network services by proposing a change in the role pharmacists play in these networks. A key task pharmacists perform which is a critical step in the medication dispensing process is verifying that the medication filled is the one prescribed and that it does not conflict with other medications the patient is taking. This dissertation proposes that pharmacists provide important counseling services (i.e. PDPC services) to patients inside community pharmacies. We discuss how adding PDPC services changes the workflow of a community pharmacy and discuss strategies to overcome obstacles preventing pharmacists from providing PDPC services. We use a Discrete Event Simulation (DES) model to simulate a local community pharmacy as well as a community pharmacy network to evaluate strategies that can be used to either improve the workflow process internally (internal strategies) or provide an external resource that can be used to provide support to the pharmacy (external strategies). The internal strategies studied are adding a staff member, predicting prescription pick up times, and providing short duration PDPC services in busy hours. The external strategies studied are utilizing a central fill to dispense part of the pharmacy's demand and adding PDPC kiosks to provide PDPC services inside the pharmacy. The effect of each strategy and the extent of its benefits are studied and highlighted in chapters 2 & 3. The central fill location problem was modeled as a chance constraint stochastic P-median capacitated facility location problem. Three extensions to the location model are added and discussed in detail. Several lower bounds were provided to the problem and an efficient solution method was used to solve the problem. Finally the model was applied to a community pharmacy network in PA in a case study. The results showed that ignoring the highest demand scenarios can save the community pharmacy network from having to add an additional central fill

Sustainable Wastewater Management: Modeling and Decision Strategies for Unused Medications and Wastewater Solids.

"Triple bottom line" evaluation techniques that include treatment performance models are necessary to help decision-makers evaluate new practices for sustainable wastewater management. To this end, this dissertation developed a sustainability decision-making framework that integrates life-cycle thinking with treatment technology assessments and applied it to two key wastewater treatment sustainability issues: effluent quality and energy use. The first study focuses on the occurrence of pharmaceuticals in wastewater effluents. Increasingly, environmental professionals are recommending that consumers return their unused medications to a central location for incineration, thereby avoiding pharmaceuticals in the water. However, these “take-back” programs might result in significant air pollution without significantly improving pharmaceutical occurrence in the environment. This study quantified and compared the environmental emissions associated with the direct disposal of medication to a wastewater treatment plant, to a household trashcan for landfilling or incineration, and to a collection program for incineration. A decision-support tool was created by developing and combining disposal system models and pharmaceutical fate models using life cycle assessment methodology. This tool was used to evaluate and compare the environmental impacts of different disposal scenarios. The environmental impact results coupled with disposal cost and participation data indicate that trash disposal is the best option to reduce pharmaceutical emissions. The second study focuses on wastewater treatment plant energy use. Anaerobic codigestion is an emerging practice used to increase energy recovery from waste, but its energy production potential is limited by process stability issues. In order to determine how to maximize energy production without compromising process stability, a comprehensive and quantitative stability assessment was created and linked with an anaerobic digestion process model. The resulting decision support tool was used to evaluate multiple waste combination and energy production scenarios. The results revealed potential limitations of current design guidelines and identified influent characteristics that have the greatest potential for stable energy recovery from waste. This tool provides a mechanism for establishing influent criteria that can be coupled with environmental impact and cost data in order to design sustainable codigestion systems.PHDEnvironmental EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109006/1/cooksm_1.pd

Retail Inventory Control Strategies

Despite using computerized merchandise control systems in retail, the rate of stockouts has remained stagnant. The inability to satisfy customer needs has caused a loss of 4% in potential revenue and resulted in dissatisfied customers. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore cost-effective inventory control strategies used by discount retail managers. The conceptual framework that grounded the study was chaos theory, which helped identify why some business leaders rely on forecasting techniques or other cost-effective strategies as an attempt to prevent stockouts. The target population was comprised of discount retail managers located throughout northeast Jacksonville, Florida. Purposeful sampling led to selecting 6 retail managers who successfully demonstrated cost-effective inventory control strategies for mitigating stockouts. Data were collected through face-to-face semistructured interviews, company websites, and company documents. Analysis included using nodes to identify similar words and axial-coding to categorize the nodes into themes. Transcript evaluation, member checking, and methodological triangulation strengthened the credibility of the findings. Five themes emerged: (a) internal stockout reduction strategies, (b) external stockout reduction strategies, (c) replenishment system strategies, (d) inventory optimization strategies, and (e) best practices for inventory control. This study may contribute to positive social change by improving inventory management, which may reduce demand fluctuations in the supply chain and reduce logistics costs in the transportation of freight thereby leading to improved customer satisfaction