Time:2019.03.20, 12:30-14:00 PM

Location:Room 615, Main Building

KeynoteSpeaker:Dr.Mou Shandong

Abstract:Retail store profitabilityrelates in partto the alignment of staff with changing customer and storeneeds. While there are many studies on workforce planning decisions producingpersonnel schedules in advance, research on the common phenomenon of Real-TimeLabour Allocation (RTLA) where mismatches between labour demand and service atthe execution stage are addressed by allocating cross-trained employees amongdepartments is scant. Our interviews with retail practitioners confirm thatRTLA decisions lack analytical justification. In view of this, we design a generalizablestylized Retail Store Simulator (RSS) and instantiate the RSS using data from agourmet supermarket. Simulation results show substantial long-term benefits to storeperformance from RTLA–a potential 6.6% increase in market share compared with No-RTLA. Wefurther discuss RTLA’s benefits under various employee cross-trainingconfigurations, answering a question from the collaborating retailer–“given the benefits of RTLA, how should we manage workforceflexibility?” We conduct extensive“what-if”analysis and find that broadening employee skill range anddeepening employee proficiency increase the benefits of RTLA. This researchhelps understand workforce management at the execution stage.

Bio:Mou Shandong isa PhD student in the Graduate School of Management at the University ofAuckland, New Zealand. His research interests include retail operations andlogistics engineering. His research has appeared inEuropean Journal ofOperational Research,Computers & Industrial Engineering,ChineseJournal of Mechanical Engineering,International Journal of ProductionResearch, among others. He serves as an ad-hoc reviewer forEuropeanJournal of Operational ResearchandComputers & Operations Research.