Operations Strategy Case Study

Case Title:

Arranging Stock in a Warehouse: Cluster Analysis

Abstract:
Praveen Kumar (Praveen) owns an automobile spare parts shop, which has seen a continuous increase in sales over the years. However, in the recent quarters, Praveen observed that his sales were decreasing, though he was stocking more number and variety of spare parts than when shop was started. With little observation, Praveen finds that the waiting time for each customer is more. Lot of time is consumed by the sales men to deliver the orders, as the spare parts in the warehouse are arranged randomly, causing delay in serving the customers. Praveen decides to use cluster analysis to arrange the stock in his shop. The case discusses and analyses the use of cluster analysis.

Pedagogical Objectives:

The case study facilitates to understand:
• The definition of cluster analysis
• The usage of cluster analysis in business situation.

Keywords : Business Research, Statistical Technique, Cluster Technique, Cluster Analysis, Cluster, Cluster Sampling, Stratified Sampling, Homogeneous Groups, Hetrogeneous Group, Segmentation of Population, Enclidean Metric, Enclidean Distance, Weighted Enclidean Distance, Hierarchical Technique, Similarity Measures, Dendogram, Optimisation Technique