Forecasting of service time demand on register lines of retail stores

• Main Author: Ármann Árnason 1982-
• Other Authors: Háskólinn í Reykjavík
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: Rekstrarverkfræði; Smásala; Rekstrarhagræðing; Starfsfólk; Líkön; Tækni- og verkfræðideild; Meistaraprófsritgerðir; Engineering management; Retail trade; Models; School of Science and Engineering; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/13998

Labour costs are often a big portion of retail businesses operating costs. Being able to forecast the amount of required labour hours to meet customer demand on register lines, on an hourly basis, would present retail businesses with a real opportunity to minimize the risk of either over- or understaffing register lines. The model proposed in this paper is intended to give retail businesses this capability in an automated forecasting model that is relatively easy to implement and does not require that administrators have an expertise in the field of forecasting. A requirement for successful forecasting of this type is being able to anticipate events and their expected effect on actual service time. For this reason a method of automatically handling events is introduced to the proposed forecasting model. An event calendar is used to anticipate when events will be active and factors for the expected effects of events stored. A method of automatically updating the factors of events is also introduced to make sure that factors of events always represent the latest pattern of effect. The proposed model requires an administrator to update the event calendar and define new events but otherwise the model is intended to be fully automated, running once a day and updating a twelve month forecast. The proposed model was tested using actual data from a large retail business in Iceland which yielded promising results. Starfsmannakostnaður er oft stór hluti rekstrarkostnaðar smásöluaðila. Að geta spáð fyrir hversu margar starfsmannatíma þarf til að afgreiða alla viðskiptavini á kassalínum, niður á klukkutíma, myndi gera smásöluaðilum kleift að lágmarka líkur á að kassalínur séu yfir- eða undirmannaðar. Módelið sem lagt er fram í þessari ritgerð er ætlað til að gefa smásöluaðilum þennan hæfileika með sjálfvirku spámódeli sem er nokkuð auðvelt í innleiðingu og þarfnast ekki sértækrar þekkingar á sviði spálíkanagerðar. Skilyrði fyrir því að slík spágerð sé raunhæf er að módelið sé fært um að sjá fyrir sérstaka viðburði og ...