TY - CHAP SN - 3-5402-2611-7 AU - Donselaar, Karel H. van AU - van Woensel, Tom AU - Broekmeulen, Rob A.C.M. AU - Fransoo, Jan C. T1 - Improvement opportunities in retail logistics T2 - Consumer driven electronic transformation : applying new technologies to enthuse consumers and transform the supply chain ED - G.J. Doukidis ED - A.P. Vrechopoulos PY - 2005 CY - Germany PB - Springer SP - 9 EP - 21 AB - In this chapter, we have shown that both customer service and the capacity utilization in retail chains can be increased by improving the logistic decisions taken by the retailer. New teclmologies allow the retailers to improve their logistic decisions by increasing either the level of differentiation, the level of sophistication and/or the level of integration in their decisionmaking. In many retail chains, different items need different logistic solutions. In this chapter, we distinguished five product categories: items that are phasing-inlout, items that are on promotion, items that are driving the utilization of capacities, and regular items. All these categories require a different way of controlling the operations. Most ASO systems currently applied are primarily developed for regular items. In this chapter, we describe how these ASO systems can be improved to also support other products. Al though the findings are based on observations at Dutch retailers, discussions with retailers in other countries indicate that most results also apply elsewhere. A final remark can be made on the importance of labor costs in retail chains, and its impact on the focus of Retail Logistics. In many retail chains, we noted that labor costs by far outweigh the inventory holding costs at the operational level (i.e. if the size of the store, the product as sortment and the planograms are fixed). This implies that a major focus of top management in retail chains should be on how to improve labor efficiency. Little scientific research has been done in this area, and so more research is needed to get a better understanding of the factors detennining labor efficiency in stores. TS - BibTeX DO - 10.1007/3-540-27059-0_2 M4 - Citavi ER -