Professor Asvin Goel selected for TSL Best Paper Award
KLU Professor Asvin Goel, together with his co-authors Dr. Arpan Rijal (University of Groningen), Dr. Marco Bijvank (Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary) and Prof. René de Koster (Rotterdam School of Management) have been selected for this year’s INFORMS Transportation Science and Logistics (TSL) Society Best Paper Award in Facility Logistics.
In their winning paper, the researchers investigate workforce scheduling with order-picking assignments in distribution. The study was conducted in close collaboration with the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands and puts forward an alternative method for assigning pickers to batches of orders in the retailer’s warehouses.
“Our research shows that retailers can achieve labor costs savings of five percent with flexible break times even if they increase workers’ minimum compensation by 17%”, says Prof. Goel. This measure can also significantly help to improve job satisfaction. “Moreover, additional cost savings of around four percent can be achieved when shift start times are introduced”, says Goel. Inspired by the results, the supermarket chain has since decided to implement additional shifts and flexible breaks.
The annual TSL Best Paper Award goes to an outstanding paper in the field of transportation science and logistics. To win, a paper must present innovative approaches to solving complex problems in transportation or logistics, with an emphasis on operations research and quantitative methods.
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