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Our client faces very special problems as a thrift retailer. The timing, quantity, quality, and mix of donations is inconsistent as is the amount of volunteer help. "Raw" merchandise does not arrive in a form that can be easily warehoused. Donations arrive loose, in boxes, and in garbage bags, and much of what arrives is not sellable. Sellable items must be sorted, graded, priced, displayed in the store, and sold as quickly as possible to make room for new stock as it arrives. Our assignment is to flowchart this process -- from the inbound door at the loading dock to the outbound door at the front of the store -- in order to identify bottlenecks. The hope is that by locating bottlenecks and then identifying issues associated with these bottlenecks, we can then suggest changes to make the process more efficient. As an example, the client found that much time was being consumed in sorting, pricing, and tagging clothing items. This was something that could not be done by volunteers, and so clothing items often ended up on the store racks without prices. The client greatly improved the process through the use of menu pricing, similar to what would be called "line pricing" in a marketing book. With menu pricing, all items of the same type are classified under the same price. Now, volunteer help merely needs to unpack clothing items and hang them. This eliminated a serious bottleneck in the process, but it also had the unexpected bonus of greatly increasing sales. Prices were now clear to customers, eliminating any sort of hesitancy that they had in the past when prices were not clear or consistent. Perhaps even more important, however, is that the elimination of this bottleneck now makes it possible for all clothing items to reach the store showroom. Now, there is always new stock waiting for a place on a store rack, and so clothing on display that does not quickly sell is removed to be bailed and sent to a recycler to make room for fresh stock. Customers now return to the store more frequently and purchase more because they know that there is a quick turnover in displayed clothing. Menu pricing of clothing, however, has only helped to improve one bottleneck. As the virtual tour shows, there is still a need to make the clothing items move more quickly and a need to more quickly move non-clothing items which are more difficult to classify, price, tag, and display.
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