Case Study #2

Executive Summary:

There are a large number of customers' complaints at one of the Tip Top markets, especially happened on Tuesday. Here would be the analysis and recommendations of such situations based on the customer complaint records of last nine Tuesday from the store's customer service desks.

The complaints records were divided to three main sections by analyzing, as similar as the management's implement on July 15, included the problems of out of order (33.15%), store maintenance (44.02%) and checkout lines/pricing (22.83%), data by Check Sheet #1.

Based on the data of Check Sheet #2, the daily food is occupied 59.02% of out of inventory while the daily commodity is stood 37.70%, so that the store might be better to improve the inventory management, forecast the further demand and consider the cycle time of the products.

Store maintenance, which was the most serious problem in the records, was distributed as customer services, facility problems and food's property problems (Check Sheet #3). Facility problems were took half of the maintenance fault, the solution of that would be keeping both their refrigerators on an acceptable constant temperature and the shopping environment in a clean & tidy condition.

For the checkout line/pricing problems, I recommend that addressing the opening amounts of checkout lines through observing customer flow by cashers, and checking that whether price labels are correct if updating pricing system.

Analysis:

(1)Out of Inventory

In the evaluation, the most shortage category was daily food, which almost is the main subject of out of stock complaints in every Tuesday, stand 59.02% of the whole period. Meanwhile, the daily commodity was became shortage in the fourth Tuesday of the data; then, the shortage has a steady increasing. In addition, the Tip tops own daily products got a lot of complaints from the last three Tuesdays. (Check Sheet #2)

There are two kinds of category in daily food, including seasonal ones and long term storage ones. The seasonal ones could be defined as fresh fruit & vegetable while the long term storage ones would be various package foods. Sometimes it might be difficulty for the store to balance prices and demand of seasonal foods due to their storing period are quiet short while some of them are rare, which caused them out of inventory quite often. Therefore, I suggest that put seasonal food on shelf near alternative goods, which could be either package food or other seasonal alternative, or putting a reminding label said "Sorry, we are out of stock." on there. However, those two solutions might not be able to solve the inventory problems essentially. Moreover, the Tip Tops own daily commodity showed seriously out of inventory during the last three weeks, which might be caused by promotion reasons bringing a quick sale. Otherwise, the management of inventory should be improved seriously.

To the best was of solving inventory problems, I prefer to improve the inventory management, managers need to learn how to make a balance of supply & demand and cycle time of various products. The managers also need to evaluate various potential variability that help recognize how much the additional stock might be need that reducing the risk of either shortage or delay deliveries.

(2)Store Maintenance

Store maintenance was the store's main problem, occupied 44.02% of the total whole customer complaints, which would be divided into three parts by analyzing, including customer services, facility problems and food's problems (Check Sheet #3).

Customer services problems (16.05%) were including the attitude of cashiers, lost & claim and other problems