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Grocery store tasks provide many opportunities for efficiency and ergonomic improvements. Shelf stocking is one task that has received considerable attention in recent years as grocery stores seek to remain competitive by stocking shelves in an efficient manner in order to satisfy customers. The purpose of this paper is to detail an analysis performed to evaluate the effectiveness of a grocery store shelf stocking tool. This shelf stocking aid is a device designed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of stocking and fronting shelves in a supermarket or a similar retail environment.

To test the claims that the device actually does improve stocking accuracy, efficiency, and ergonomic soundness, an experiment was conducted to compare the processes of stocking shelves and fronting items on shelves with and without the stocking tool. In creating the realistic conditions of a real-world store environment, extensive inquiry about item stocking and fronting procedures was made by visiting stores and discussing the stocking and fronting tasks with industry experts. Tests were performed at varying combinations of shelf heights, shelf fullness, with and without First-In First-Out processing, and with various merchandise sizes and shapes.

The results indicate that the shelf stocking tool significantly reduces shelf stocking and fronting time. The ergonomic merits of the tool were also analyzed. A Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) was performed to evaluate biomechanical and postural stresses experienced by a shelf stocker as they stock and front store shelves. It appears that the largest contributor to higher-than-expected RULA scores is extensive upper torso bending in the sagittal plane at the L5 S1 disc position. This is exacerbated as the stocker reaches lower shelves and bends forward to reach under the shelf directly above the item being stocked or fronted.

Only three tall and five short items were used in testing. More testing is needed to draw conclusions about stacking items. Cumulative fatigue effects were not tested nor were the locations of specific physical discomfort. Testing was not done to examine simultaneously fronting two rows with the shelf stocking tool. Testing was not done to simulate the use of a step stool, including moving and repositioning the step stool for manual restocking and fronting on high shelves. The step stool handling would improve relative performance of the shelf stocking tool because the tool eliminates the need for a step stool.

Grocery store shelf stocking associates are at risk of developing cumulative trauma type injuries from awkward posture that they have to use when stocking shelves. With many small items on a shelf that are continually becoming disheveled as customers purchase the items, there are significant inefficiencies in continually arranging and rearranging the items as well as adding new. The analysis of a tool of the type tested here has shown that the use of a simple tool such as the one tested can go a long way to improving both of these elements of the stocking and fronting task.

While the shelf stocking tool is not necessarily a remedy for bending, it appears to reduce more pronounced bending than what is required without it. For stocking or fronting upper shelves, it also appears to reduce the extensive reaches (the second most stressful contributor to the high RULA scores). This approach to stocking and fronting shelves has helped to verify the idea that a tool such as this can help to improve not only the speed and efficiency at which the task is accomplished it can also reduce the stress on the back and shoulders during this tedious task.

An interview with Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, about er latest book, The Case for Good Jobs: How Great Companies Bring Dignity, Pay & Meaning to Everyone’s Work.

She believes that leaders can either view their employees as a cost to be minimized, invest little in them and operate with high turnover, or they can see them as drivers of profitability and growth—investing heavily in them, designing their work for high productivity and contribution and therefore operating with low turnover.-- “the good jobs strategy.”

The secret sauce of good jobs strategy is four operational choices—focus and simplify, standardize and empower, cross-train and operate with slack—that improve productivity and contribution and make that higher investment possible.

The competitive costs of low people investment are even higher than the poor operational execution costs.

By making the work better and increasing pay, companies can better attract and keep their talent and enforce high standards, which improve execution and service, uplifting revenue. Few have examined this important topic more closely than Zeynep Ton, a professor of practice in the operations management group at MIT Sloan School of Management, best-selling author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits.

For many years, facility and real estate executives have focused on reducing workplace costs as the primary way to add value to their organisations. They have implemented a variety of measures over time to improve traditional facility metrics such as cost per person, cost per seat and area per person. As global businesses contend with a bewildering array of challenges such as the uncertain world economy, unstable and often plunging stock market values, terrorism and war, however, the search for leverage in every aspect of the organisation is relentless. More is being demanded, especially from workplace assets. The good news is that much more is possible. The concept of ‘workplace’ is being redefined to keep pace with changes in organisations, employees, technology, environmental sensitivity, culture and the nature of work itself. As the approach to workplace becomes more people‐centric and less place‐centric, what emerges is a new possibility for the workplace to be utilised as a strategic business tool. People are the key to business performance; the workplace can enable and catalyse people and the work they do. This paper deals with the process for linking workplace to business performance, key tools, innovative ways of measuring this linkage, and examples of the value a variety of organisations are achieving through their innovative workplace strategies. The paper is intended to provide real estate executives and facility managers with greater perspective on the contribution that the workplace can make to achieving business objectives. It will also explore ways of incorporating adaptability and flexibility into the design aspect of workplace strategies to achieve maximum velocity and return on investment. As organisations struggle to adapt to current business conditions, a high‐performance workplace is no longer simply a desirable long‐term goal; it may well be a key to survival.

This article investigates the intellectual roots of perestroika. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, the architect of perestroika claims that his programmes and policies are aimed at a revolutionary transformation of the Soviet economy from an overly centralised command system of management to a democratic system based mainly on economic methods and on an optimal combination of centralism and self‐management. To facilitate the restructuring process, Gorbachev simultaneously initiated two sweeping political reforms: glasnost (no “radical change is possible without it”); and demokratizatsiya (”there is no present‐day socialism, nor can there be, without democracy”). Therefore, prominent features envisaged by perestroika would presumably include: an optimal combination between centralism and self‐management, that would imply decentralisation in the economic management of the country; replacement of administrative methods by economic methods, that would emphasise economic incentives and market processes more than machineries of central planning; democratisation and openness in Soviet society, aimed at guaranteeing greater democratic rights for citizens, and pluralism in governmental and political processes.

Perishable inventory management for the grocery sector has become more challenging with extended omnichannel activities and emerging consumer expectations. This paper aims to identify and formalize key performance measures of omnichannel perishable inventory management (OCPI) and explore the influence of operational and market-related factors on these measures.

The inductive approach of this research synthesizes three performance measures (product waste, lost sales and freshness) and four influencing factors (channel effect, demand variability, product perishability and shelf life visibility) for OCPI, through industry investigation, expert interviews and a systematic literature review. Treating OCPI as a complex adaptive system and considering its transaction costs, this paper formalizes the OCPI performance measures and their influencing factors in two statements and four propositions, which are then tested through numerical analysis with simulation.

Product waste, lost sales and freshness are identified as distinctive OCPI performance measures, which are influenced by product perishability, shelf life visibility, demand variability and channel effects. The OCPI sensitivity to those influencing factors is diverse, whereas those factors are found to moderate each other's effects.

To manage perishables more effectively, with less waste and lost sales for the business and fresher products for the consumer, omnichannel firms need to consider store and online channel requirements and strive to reduce demand variability, extend product shelf life and facilitate item-level shelf life visibility. While flexible logistics capacity and dynamic pricing can mitigate demand variability, the product shelf life extension needs modifications in product design, production, or storage conditions. OCPI executives can also increase the product shelf life visibility through advanced stock monitoring/tracking technologies (e.g. smart tags or more comprehensive barcodes), particularly for the online channel which demands fresher products.

This paper provides a novel theoretical view on perishables in omnichannel systems. It specifies the OCPI performance, beyond typical inventory policies for cost minimization, while discussing its sensitivity to operations and market factors.

The design of retail backroom storage areas has great impact on in-store operations, customer service level and on store life-cycle costs. Moreover, backroom storage in modern retail grocery stores is critical to several functions, such as acting as a buffer against strong demand lifts yielded by an ever-increasing promotional activity, stocking seasonal peak demand and accommodating e-commerce activities. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to design retail backroom storage area. Furthermore, the authors aim to draw attention to the lack of literature on this topic, while clarifying the relationship between this promising research stream and the considerable body of research regarding the design and operations of conventional warehouses, as well as retail in-store operations.

The key literature on backrooms, grocery retail, in-store operations, warehouse design and operations was reviewed. This allowed an understanding of the gap in the literature regarding the design of backrooms. Moreover, a case study methodological approach was conducted in a Portuguese retailer to extend the literature review.

Despite having functions similar to conventional warehouses, backroom storage facilities have particularities that deserve a distinct analysis. Thus, the authors stress these differences and demonstrate how they influence the development of a novel backroom design framework.

This paper fills a gap by proposing a framework to design backroom areas. Furthermore, this research may help practitioners to better design backroom areas, since this process currently lacks a formal and standardized procedure.

Because increasing product variety in retail conflicts with limited shelf space, managing assortment and shelf quantities is a core decision in this sector. A retailer needs to define the assortment size and then assign shelf space to meet consumer demand. However, the current literature lacks not only information on the comprehensive structure of the decision problem, but also a decision support system that can be directly applied to practice in a straightforward manner. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The findings were developed and evaluated by means of explorative interviews with grocery retail experts. An optimization model is proposed to solve the problem of assortment planning with limited shelf space for data sets of a size relevant in real retail practice.

The author identifies the underlying planning problems based on a qualitative survey of retailers and relates the problems to each other. This paper develops a pragmatic approach to the capacitated assortment problem with stochastic demand and substitution effects. The numerical examples reveal that substitution demand has a significant impact on total profit and solution structure.

The author shows that the model and solution approach are scalable to problem sizes relevant in practice. Furthermore, the planning architecture structures the related planning questions and forms a foundation for further research on decision support systems.

The planning framework structures the associated decision problems in assortment planning. An efficient solution approach for assortment planning is proposed.

To place the research on radio frequency identification (RFID) usage in supply chains within a specific business and market context; in this case, the grocery industry.

This paper considers RFID research within the context of the grocery industry and outlines the market drivers that affect the way the grocery industry approaches RFID and also specific areas of research on RFID that should be undertaken to better provide the grocery industry with managerial insights into this technology's application.

Examining market drivers that are leading to RFID implementation in the grocery industry, this paper provides a theoretical framework for future applied research on RFID implementation. Specifically, it develops a research framework that includes research using modeling techniques, RFID implementation and the impact of RFID on daily operational issues.

This paper focuses on the market drivers for RFID implementation. While it does address other areas that are related to research in this field, it is limited in its ability to go into detailed discussion of those areas. For example, while technology implementation and innovation diffusion issues are raised, they are detailed research domains of their own which can only be superficially addressed in the context of this paper.

The paper provides a detailed framework of research areas that are of direct, practical importance to the grocery industry. This should encourage research into this area, for, as researchers provide insights into these issues, the grocery industry can immediately put the findings into practice.

RFID has garnered a great deal of research interest. However, that research has primarily focused on RFID's impact on general supply chain issues, failing to place the discussion within a specific business domain. This is necessary because the strategic environment of any business impacts on the applicability of any technology.

This paper aims to characterize some of the operational benefits of item‐level radio‐frequency identification (RFID) in a retail environment.

The paper examines a retail store operation with backroom and shelf stock under the assumption of multiple replenishment and sales periods. Backroom stock is replenished according to a periodic‐review order‐up to policy and shelf stock is replenished continually from the backroom. Backroom replenishment decisions are made based on demand forecasts that are updated in each sales period based on previous sales. The influence of item‐level RFID is two‐fold: first, it directly affects the number of products sold through the efficiency and effectiveness of the backroom‐to‐shelf replenishment process. Second, it indirectly affects the retailer's demand forecast: ceteris paribus, more products sold mean a higher demand forecast, which means a higher order‐up to level in the backroom.

This study confirms that the direct effect of more efficient and effective backroom‐to‐shelf replenishment contributes the majority of benefits. On average, this model shows that approximately 80‐85 percent of the total RFID benefit is directly due to the backroom‐to‐shelf process, and only 15‐20 percent is due to an improvement in backroom stocking. This finding suggests that, in general, the operation of the backroom is not as crucial to the overall retail store profitability.

The model in this paper delivers further evidence of the importance of the “last several yards” in retail execution. This has important implications for retail RFID projects: most current retail RFID implementations and pilots focus on case‐ and pallet‐level RFID to ensure correct backroom stocking. Seeing, however, that this type of benefit accounts for less than 20 percent of total potential RFID benefits, it appears that current case‐ and pallet‐level implementations are merely scraping the tip of the iceberg.