Queuing Processes in Retail Organizations are on a Transitional Phase

Queuing management is a shared issue in any industry. Whether it be manufacturing or service industry both has its own operational delivery issues and challenges every day. However, in the recent times the queuing management in the retail sector have undergone a paradigm shift. The demographic diaspora in a subcontinent like India has coerced the top notch decision makers to inculcate this transition through the adoption of advanced analytical metrics.

Companies like Google, Facebook and other social media platforms have changed the entire dynamics of analytics in the retail industry. Parameters like average amount of footfall the retailers are observing as a metric tool for taking their queuing management decisions like how many payment channels they need to manage or keep functional on certain days. Emphasis is also given on the internet traffic as well certain facts like per bytes of data transfer, the time of visiting a website; no of frames per second time taken by a customer to visualise a product on a website and the list of statistics just keeps mounting up until it satisfies the need of the top management decision makers. So the surmount quantum of data that is exchanged makes the traditional concept of queuing quite obsolete. Thanks to the advancement of the digital payment systems and the advent of artificial intelligence has bolstered this transition. Recently, an Indian tabloid has declared in its report that, since the inception of the BHIM app payment transactions of approximately Rs 1500 Crore was performed. Which significantly provides us evidence that now the queue traffic have shifted at the delivery channels and the service end. So managing the supply chain queue is a daunting task for the operational managers now a days.

Courtesy: Mr. Aniruddha Ghosh (Faculty, IMS Noida)