Special Libraries, November 1980

Volume 71, Issue 11https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_sl_1980/1009/thumbnail.jp

Design and Control of Warehouse Order Picking: a literature review

Order picking has long been identified as the most labour-intensive and costly activity for almost every warehouse; the cost of order picking is estimated to be as much as 55% of the total warehouse operating expense. Any underperformance in order picking can lead to unsatisfactory service and high operational cost for its warehouse, and consequently for the whole supply chain. In order to operate efficiently, the orderpicking process needs to be robustly designed and optimally controlled. This paper gives a literature overview on typical decision problems in design and control of manual order-picking processes. We focus on optimal (internal) layout design, storage assignment methods, routing methods, order batching and zoning. The research in this area has grown rapidly recently. Still, combinations of the above areas have hardly been explored. Order-picking system developments in practice lead to promising new research directions.Order picking;Logistics;Warehouse Management

Supermarkets, Modern Supply Chains, and the Changing Food Policy Agenda

There is great interest among policy makers in how to influence the behavior of supermarkets in ways that serve the interests of important groups in society, especially small farmers and the owners of traditional, small-scale food wholesale and retail facilities. Two broader issues are also important: (1) finding a way for food prices to “internalize” the full environmental costs of production and marketing; and (2) finding a way for supermarkets to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, to the health problems generated by an “affluent” diet and lifestyle. There are concerns over the growing concentration in global food retailing and the potential market power that concentration implies. But the evidence of fierce competition at the retail level, and the high contestability for food consumers’ dollars, have kept this issue in the background. The ultimate impact of supermarkets in developing countries will be on the level and distribution of improved welfare for consumers. What happens to small farmers, traditional traders and mom-and-pop shops will be factors in both the size of welfare gains and their distribution, but many other factors will also come into play. Our judgment on the impact of the supermarket revolution must incorporate all of those factors. This paper places the supermarket debate in the broader evolution of food policy analysis, which is a framework for integrating household, market, macro and trade issues as they affect hunger and poverty. Increasingly, supermarkets provide the institutional linkages across these issues.Food policy; agricultural diversification; structural transformation; poverty

Eavesdropping Whilst You're Shopping: Balancing Personalisation and Privacy in Connected Retail Spaces

Physical retailers, who once led the way in tracking with loyalty cards and `reverse appends', now lag behind online competitors. Yet we might be seeing these tables turn, as many increasingly deploy technologies ranging from simple sensors to advanced emotion detection systems, even enabling them to tailor prices and shopping experiences on a per-customer basis. Here, we examine these in-store tracking technologies in the retail context, and evaluate them from both technical and regulatory standpoints. We first introduce the relevant technologies in context, before considering privacy impacts, the current remedies individuals might seek through technology and the law, and those remedies' limitations. To illustrate challenging tensions in this space we consider the feasibility of technical and legal approaches to both a) the recent `Go' store concept from Amazon which requires fine-grained, multi-modal tracking to function as a shop, and b) current challenges in opting in or out of increasingly pervasive passive Wi-Fi tracking. The `Go' store presents significant challenges with its legality in Europe significantly unclear and unilateral, technical measures to avoid biometric tracking likely ineffective. In the case of MAC addresses, we see a difficult-to-reconcile clash between privacy-as-confidentiality and privacy-as-control, and suggest a technical framework which might help balance the two. Significant challenges exist when seeking to balance personalisation with privacy, and researchers must work together, including across the boundaries of preferred privacy definitions, to come up with solutions that draw on both technology and the legal frameworks to provide effective and proportionate protection. Retailers, simultaneously, must ensure that their tracking is not just legal, but worthy of the trust of concerned data subjects.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure, Proceedings of the PETRAS/IoTUK/IET Living in the Internet of Things Conference, London, United Kingdom, 28-29 March 201

Design and Control of Warehouse Order Picking: a literature review

Order picking has long been identified as the most labour-intensive and costly activity for almost every warehouse; the cost of order picking is estimated to be as much as 55% of the total warehouse operating expense. Any underperformance in order picking can lead to unsatisfactory service and high operational cost for its warehouse, and consequently for the whole supply chain. In order to operate efficiently, the orderpicking process needs to be robustly designed and optimally controlled. This paper gives a literature overview on typical decision problems in design and control of manual order-picking processes. We focus on optimal (internal) layout design, storage assignment methods, routing methods, order batching and zoning. The research in this area has grown rapidly recently. Still, combinations of the above areas have hardly been explored. Order-picking system developments in practice lead to promising new research directions

2005 Projects Day Booklet

https://scholarworks.seattleu.edu/projects-day/1020/thumbnail.jp

Analyzing a Shopper’s Visual Experience in a Retail Store and the Impact on Impulse Profit

The retail industry in the U.S. contributed 1.14 trillion in value added (or 5.9%) to the GDP in 2017, an increase of 3.7% from the previous year. While store closures have dominated the news in the recent past (e.g., Toys-R-Us, Sears, and Bon-Ton) due to ineffective supply chain practices, inadequate in-store experiences, and competition from e-tailers, other retailers such as Ross, T. J. Maxx, Burlington Coat Factory, and Kroger have been expanding their footprint. Brick-and-mortar stores are unique as they allow shoppers the ability to see, touch, and try products, in addition to exploring new products. Kohl’s CEO has even indicated that 90% of their revenue is still generated in brick-and-mortar stores. Besides reducing supply chain costs, retailers have been paying considerable attention to redesigning their stores by varying layouts and displays to improve shopping experience and remain profitable. However, a lack of scientific methods that correlate layout changes to improved experience has often led to time-consuming and expensive trial-and-error approaches for the retailers. This research focuses on the design of such brick-and-mortar stores by developing a quantitative approach that models the visual interaction between a 3D shopper’s field of view and the rack layout. This visual interaction has been shown to influence shopper purchasing habits and their overall experience. While some metrics for visual experience have been proposed in the literature, they have been limited in many ways. The objective of this research is to develop new models to quantify visual experience and employ them in layout design models. Our first contribution consists of quantifying exposure (which rack locations are seen) and the intensity of exposure (how long they are seen) by accounting for the dynamic interaction between the human 3D field of regard with a 3D rack layout. We consider several rack designs/layouts that we noticed at nearby retail stores, ranging from the typical rectangular racks placed orthogonal to the main aisle to racks with varying orientations, curvatures, and heights. We model this 3D layout problem as a series of 2D problems while accounting for obstructions faced by shoppers during their travel path (both uni- and bi-directional). We also validate our approach through a human subjects study in a Virtual Environment. Our findings suggest that curving racks in a layout with racks oriented at 90° could increase exposure by 3-121% over straight racks. Further, several layout designs could increase exposure by over 500% with only a 20% increase in floor space. In our second contribution, we introduce the Rack Orientation and Curvature Problem (ROCP) for a retail store, which determines the best rack orientation and curvature that maximizes marginal impulse profit (after discounting for floor space cost). We derive impulse profit considering the probability a shopper will see a product category, the probability the shopper will purchase a product from that category if seen, and the product category’s unit profit. We estimate the probability that a shopper will see a location through a novel approach that considers (i) the effective area of that location, (ii) probability distribution of a shopper’s head position based on real shopper head movements, and (iii) exposure estimates from our approach in Contribution 1. To solve the ROCP, we design a particle swarm optimization approach and conduct a comprehensive experimental study using realistic data. Our findings suggest that layouts with either high-acute and straight-to-medium-curved racks or high-obtuse and high-curved racks tend to maximize marginal impulse profit. Profit increases ranging from 70-233% over common rack layouts (orthogonal and straight racks) can be realized depending on the location policy of product categories. The sensitivity of these solutions to shopper volume, cost of floor space, travel direction, and maximum aspect ratio is also evaluated. The implications of our proposed models and findings are wide-ranging to retailers. First, they provide retailers with insights on how design parameters affect both exposure and marginal impulse profit; this can help avoid expensive experiments with layout changes. Second, they reveal hot-warm-cold spots for specific layout designs, allowing for effective product location assignments. Finally, these insights can help enhance shopper interactions with products (i.e., ability to see more products, find products faster), which can improve their shopping experience and drive up sales

How Has The Food Industry Manipulated The Way Consumers Perceive Food And Health?

Food is the most advertised commodity in the United States and food corporations spend on average over $36 billion a year on marketing and advertising (Albritton 172). Seventy percent of total advertising goes to market convenience foods, candy, snacks, soft drinks, desserts and alcohol (Albritton 172). As a result of the wide range of marketing on an even wider range of products, consumers have been taught to feel they have a considerable amount of choice. Ironically despite the array of brand-name commodities that give off this impression, only a few giant corporations control much of what is being offered