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

See all articles by Martin E. Dresner

Martin E. Dresner

University of Maryland

Yuliang Oliver Yao

University of Delaware

Kevin Zhu

University of California, San Diego

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

Dresner, Martin E. and Yao, Yuliang and Zhu, Kevin, Performance Variations in Order Fulfillment across Days of the Week: How IT-Enabled Procurement May Help (January 11, 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1535117 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1535117

Martin E. Dresner

University of Maryland ( email )

College Park
College Park, MD 20742
United States

Yuliang Yao (Contact Author)

University of Delaware ( email )

Newark, DE 19711
United States

Kevin Zhu

University of California, San Diego ( email )

9500 Gilman Drive
Mail Code 0502
La Jolla, CA 92093-0112
United States

HOME PAGE: http://https://rady.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/zhu/

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