On Shelf Availability: A Literature Review & Conceptual Framework

On-Shelf Availability (OSA) is a key performance indicator for the retail industry, greatly impacting profit and customer loyalty. Strong competition in the industry causes retailers and suppliers to put heavy emphasis on improving performance in an effort to satisfy consumers and keep them coming back to their store or product. Over 40 years of research has been done on OSA and its complement, out-of stock (OOS), however very little progress has been made in improving performance in these areas, leading to the belief that gaps in extant research exist. In order to solve the OOS problem, the key drivers of OOS events must first be identified and then addressed. This paper focuses on identifying the drivers of poor OSA performance through a three step process. First, a comprehensive literature review was performed to identify the drivers of OOS addressed in existing literature. Second, interviews with industry professionals revealed potential drivers of poor OSA performance that have been explored at an industry level. Finally, the two lists were examined against each other and the potential drivers identified in the interviews that had yet to be researched were highlighted. This paper gives strategic direction for future research to help solve the OOS dilemma facing manufacturers and retailers today

The Future of Retail Operations

Retailing consists of all the activities associated with the selling of goods to the final consumer. In this article, we review the research on retail operations published in Manufacturing & Service Operations Research (M&SOM) since 1999. We then discuss the current retail landscape and the new research directions it offers, in which M&SOM can play a prominent role

Overview and classification of coordination contracts within forward and reverse supply chains

Among coordination mechanisms, contracts are valuable tools used in both theory and practice to coordinate various supply chains. The focus of this paper is to present an overview of contracts and a classification of coordination contracts and contracting literature in the form of classification schemes. The two criteria used for contract classification, as resulted from contracting literature, are transfer payment contractual incentives and inventory risk sharing. The overview classification of the existing literature has as criteria the level of detail used in designing the coordination models with applicability on the forward and reverse supply chains.Coordination contracts; forward supply chain; reverse supply chain

Measuring the variability in supply chains with the peakedness

This paper introduces a novel way to measure the variability of order flows in supply chains, the peakedness. The peakedness can be used to measure the variability assuming the order flow is a general point pro- cess. We show basic properties of the peakedness, and demonstrate its computation from real-time continuous demand processes, and cumulative demand collected at fixed time intervals as well. We also show that the peakedness can be used to characterize demand, forecast, and inventory variables, to effectively manage the variability. Our results hold for both single stage and multistage inventory systems, and can further be extended to a tree-structured supply chain with a single supplier and multiple retailers. Furthermore, the peakedness can be applied to study traditional inventory problems such as quantifying bullwhip effects and determining safety stock levels. Finally, a numerical study based on real life Belgian supermarket data verifies the effectiveness of the peakedness for measuring the order flow variability, as well as estimating the bullwhip effects.variability, peakedness, supply chain