The coronavirus pandemic is wreaking change throughout the retail landscape, especially as it affects the balance between online purchases and traditional brick-and-mortar sales.
Ray Huang, head of Asia and principal engineer with Exponent, provides an update on the progress of factories in Asia and elsewhere in resuming full operations — and discusses the obstacles that might stand in the way.
Challenge: A large U.S. food producer was incurring sizable on-time, in-full delivery fines due to late deliveries to a large retailer. The producer’s objective was to contract a dedicated carrier that could provide 97% on-time delivery out of its highest-volume distribution center — moving its overall on-time delivery metric into acceptable range and avoiding costly penalties.
When Americans couldn’t find hand sanitizer, toilet paper and disinfecting wipes on Amazon.com, many assumed the products had run out. In fact, in some cases the products were available, but merchants had pulled them to avoid getting caught up in Amazon’s price-gouging crackdown — even though they weren’t raising prices.
Omnichannel retailers face many challenges in satisfying customer demands. Justin Cramer, co-founder of ProShip, discusses how they can make the best use of technology to enhance service while decreasing operational costs.