Data-driven simulation modeling of the checkout process in supermarkets: Insights for decision support in retail operations

Tomasz Antczak, Rafał Weron and Jacek Zabawa

No WORMS/20/16, WORking papers in Management Science (WORMS) from Department of Operations Research and Business Intelligence, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology

Abstract: We build a realistic agent-based model for simulating customer decisions of picking lines in supermarkets. The model is calibrated to actual point of sale (POS) data from three supermarkets of one of major European retail chains and is implemented in the open-access NetLogo simulation platform. The model can provide insights as to the impact of individual customer decisions of picking lines on the overall efficiency of the checkout process. In particular, we show that when customers pick a line by minimizing the expected waiting time, not only is this choice beneficial for the customers themselves, as it leads to shorter waiting times in queues, but also for the supermarket management, since it yields shorter working times of the cashiers.

Keywords: Retail operations; Customer analytics; Decision support; Checkout process; Queue management system; Agent-based simulation; NetLogo (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2020-08-29
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://worms.pwr.edu.pl/RePEc/ahh/wpaper/WORMS_20_16.pdf Original version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ahh:wpaper:worms2016

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in WORking papers in Management Science (WORMS) from Department of Operations Research and Business Intelligence, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Anna Kowalska-Pyzalska ().