Improving efficiency of fresh product management system in convenience store

Abstract

From business competitiveness and constantly changing consumer behavior, leads to change of business practice to be conformed to current business context. Ready-to-eat product, which has short shelf life, is determined as a strategic product in order to differentiate from competitor and to satisfy customer’s need. Gross profit of fresh product group is also significantly greater than grocery product, so fresh product deserves to be focused. However, the current management of fresh product is not developed to actually suit with product’s characteristic. This leads to waste from excess product and opportunity loss from out of stock problems. From investigation and analysis found that waste form write-off product is very high value and it over the expected value by company at 10% of sale. The current waste is approximately at 16% of sale which excesses the targeted waste. This problem is caused by inappropriate working processes. The objective of this thesis is to propose appropriate working process and managing approach in order to mitigate problems. The methodology of thesis is to access current problems and study successful models of fresh product management, then design the working process with required technology support which suits the product’s characteristic. The result from designed process found that, the appropriate managing approach for fresh product group is empowering with sufficient supporting information. New ordering device also would enhance accuracy of decision from friendly information analysis interface. Moreover, the collaboration establishment would increase efficiency of operation and minimize costs from having same goals and objectives. The deliverables from this study are the proposed working processes of fresh product management. The implementation result is not scoped in this study as it is a big change project which requires high investment, time and committee’s approval. However, from pilot test implementation result by fully controlled ordering process by headquarter showed that waste was reduced approximately 4% of sale. So this result was implied conservatively as a minimum waste reduction rate from new ordering process. When including with other improvements in this study, the expected waste reduction rate would be approximate at 10% from current at 16% of sale. The author expects that this thesis study would be a practical procedure for organization to implement the fresh product management in future. In order to have appropriate working processes those conform to fresh product. Finally the proposed processes/concept would deliver to having right products at right store and always have availability of product to serve customer with an efficient operating system.