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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct and interaction effects of shelf space, case pack quantity, and consumer demand on shelf stockouts, i.e. stockouts at the shelf level when inventory is available in the backroom of a retail store.

This study uses discrete‐event simulation based on data collected from the ready‐to‐eat breakfast cereal category with multiple stockkeeping units (SKUs) to model a retail supply chain consisting of a supplier, a retailer, and consumers.

The results indicate that shelf space and case pack quantity have direct effects on shelf stockouts. Furthermore, evidence is found for interactions among shelf space, case pack quantity and consumer demand. Though many retailers adopt simple heuristics for shelf space allocation, such as a multiple of case pack quantity, this study suggests that such heuristics tend to over‐ or underestimate shelf space requirements when consumer demand is ignored.

This study suggests that managers should allocate shelf space for SKUs on the basis of not only case pack quantity but also consumer demand.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic paradigmatic lens through which the supply chain collaboration phenomena – including collaborative inventory management – can be understood and explained.

As theory‐building research, the paper explores the environmental conditions and managerial processes that promote or hinder supply chain collaboration from a variety of theoretical lenses including contingency theory, the resource‐based view of the firm, the relational view of the firm, force field analysis, constituency based theory, social dilemma theory, and resource‐advantage theory.

To demonstrate how an integrated theoretical framework can help us understand the dynamics of supply chain collaboration, the paper uses the framework to explicate the evolution and state of collaborative inventory management.

The framework can accurately depict and explain highly publicized collaborative failures and successes. It is also possible to draw from the model's core propositions to design prescriptive remedies for the challenges managers encounter as they seek to build collaborative inventory management capabilities.

Supply chain collaboration is a complex and dynamic phenomenon; however, existing management theories only describe locally observed phenomenon. As a result, it is a struggle to both explain existing “collaborative” behavior and provide prescriptions for leveraging collaboration to achieve differential supply chain performance. This holistic, integrative model delineates the path to collaborative success by exploring the connections among motivations, goals, mechanisms, resistors, and learning loops.

Business process reengineering applied to the order fulfillment process is becoming very popular. This research provides an overview of reengineering order fulfillment and presents some methodologies which may be helpful to managers. Several examples from the literature are provided as illustrations of issues involved in reengineering order fulfillment. Critical success factors are described including organizational structure, information technology architecture, and performance measurement. Three computer manufacturers are studied to identify the impetus for reengineering order fulfillment, opportunities and problems. Issues associated with benchmarking order fulfillment as an input to reengineering are also presented.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, provide a systematic review of the drivers of retail on-shelf availability (OSA) that have been scrutinized in the literature; second, identify areas where further scrutiny is needed; and third, critically reflect on current conceptualizations of OSA and suggest alternative perspectives that may help guide future investigations.

A systematic approach is adopted wherein nine leading journals in logistics, supply chain management, operations management, and retailing are systematically scanned for articles discussing OSA drivers. The respective journals’ websites are used as the primary platform for scanning, with Google Scholar serving as a secondary platform for completeness. Journal articles are carefully read and their respective relevance assessed. A final set of 73 articles is retained and thoroughly reviewed for the purpose of this research. The systematic nature of the review minimizes researcher bias, ensures reasonable completeness, maximizes reliability, and enables replicability.

Five categories of drivers of OSA are identified. The first four – i.e., operational, behavioral, managerial, and coordination drivers – stem from failures at the planning or execution stages of retail operations. The fifth category – systemic drivers – encompasses contingency factors that amplify the effect of supply chain failures on OSA. The review also indicates that most non-systemic OOS could be traced back to incentive misalignments within and across supply chain partners.

This research consolidates past findings on the drivers of OSA and provides valuable insights as to areas where further research may be needed. It also offers forward-looking perspectives that could help advance research on the drivers of OSA. For example, the authors invite the research community to revisit the pervasive underlying assumption that OSA is an absolute imperative and question the unidirectional relationship that higher OSA is necessarily better. The authors initiate an open dialogue to approach OSA as a service-level parameter, rather than a maximizable outcome, as indicated by inventory theory.

Communication between supply chain partners is critical for replenishment decision making. Decision support systems still require significant human decision making with regard to replenishment when promotions are involved. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the sharing of information about the magnitude and timing of retail promotions on cost efficiency in the supply chain. The authors compare performance against theoretical benchmarks and draw conclusions significant to managers.

The subjects in Study 1, 30 undergraduate students at a large, US university, completed the experiment in a single session lasting approximately 60 minutes. The experiment involved a simple, multi‐period replenishment task, played as individuals, that was somewhat like the newsvendor game. Subjects in the experiment employed in Study 2 were senior‐level members of multiple departments from a large consumer products manufacturer in the USA. Participating departments included sales, operations, and supply chain. Self‐reported questionnaires revealed that the average subject had 15 years of experience with supply chain issues and seven years of experience with replenishment. The study was conducted in a single session, lasting approximately two hours, at the corporate headquarters of the participating company. In this experiment, 76 unique subjects participated.

Results from the single‐echelon study reveal the cost‐reducing effect of knowing the magnitude and timing of demand generated by a promotion. However, the poor performance, compared with the theoretical benchmarks, by respondents in the multi‐echelon study, even when the lead time per node is half that of the single‐echelon case and the subjects were experienced managers, highlights the complexity of the task that results from a lack of coordination.

Billions of dollars are spent on retail promotions each year. The management of the forecasting and replenishment of inventory for such promotions is difficult to automate and requires significant human decision making. The paper explores some key issues that are important in the replenishment decision‐making scenario when a promotion is involved.

Although the most obvious managerial recommendation for reducing the coordination and planning problems associated with promotions is simply to communicate more, the authors' research also suggests it may not be enough to alter performance. The results suggest that while communication is helpful, coordination may represent a more serious challenge.

The total quality management (TQM) revolution of the 1980s and recent emergence of business reengineering (RE) has shifted the focus of quality improvement efforts from individual products to processes which lead to the creation and supply of these products. The literature, however, lacks a comprehensive framework for process improvement. In this paper, we present a seven‐dimension framework of process quality. These dimensions are explained with illustrations of three important business processes: logistics, order fulfillment, and new product development. These dimensions are further used to develop a model for long‐term improvement in a business process. The model proposes a blend of breakthrough improvements (B‐I) achieved through RE and incremental improvements (I‐I) realized through TQM. Furthermore, it provides a framework for improving the quality of the process along the seven dimensions in the context of B‐I and I‐I. Finally, implications of this work for the theory and practice of business process improvements are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of a key logistics and distribution variable, case pack quantity, on a consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturing firm's performance. The paper builds theory with respect to case pack quantity's dichotomous impact on the retail shelf replenishment process and subsequent impact on market share depending on product rate‐of‐sale (ROS).

The study empirically tests the case pack quantity phenomenon using monthly in‐store data collected over a two year time period, market share data and data provided by a leading US CPG manufacturer in the ready‐to‐eat cereal category. Regression analysis is used to determine if case pack quantity significantly impacts firm market share.

According to compelling theoretical and empirical evidence, the number of units per retail shipping container (case pack quantity) has a significant impact on retail market share. The evidence indicates that the effect of case pack quantity on market share depends upon the ROS of a given stock‐keeping unit (SKU). For faster selling SKUs, larger case packs should increase market share. For slower selling SKUs, larger case pack quantities reduce market share because of additional stockouts at the retail level, resulting from execution problems caused by the larger case pack quantities.

Given the study's findings, CPG manufacturing firms must align case pack quantities with SKU ROS to positively affect the shelf replenishment process.

The paper demonstrates that case pack quality has a significant impact on retail market share.