Performance Variations in Order Fulfillment across Days of the Week: How IT-Enabled Procurement May Help
37 Pages Posted: 12 Jan 2010 Last revised: 20 Jan 2017
Date Written: January 11, 2010
Abstract
Although there are both process-related and human-related grounds for systematic performance variation across days of the week, this phenomenon has not been studied in operations management. Using actual transaction records from the U.S. Government’s General Services Administration, we assess whether performance varies across day of the week in order fulfillment. Furthermore, we assess whether information technology (IT), notably an electronic procurement system, can be used to mitigate this performance variation. Performance is measured by order cycle time, complete orders fulfilled, and short shipment percentage. Based on a dataset of one million transaction records, our findings show that there indeed exists significant, systematic performance variation across days of the week with Mondays and Fridays tending to have poorer performance than other days of the week even after accounting for workload differences. Further, we find that much of the performance variation for order cycle time on Mondays can be reduced when an IT-enabled electronic market is used for order fulfillment. These findings suggest that efforts may be taken to improve fulfillment consistencies, including using information systems to mitigate variations in operations management performance.
Keywords: Electronic Markets, Supply Chain Performance, Monday Effect, Behavioral Operations
JEL Classification: C13, M11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation