First Kroger - Ocado Fulfillment Center

Continued high tech improvements by Kroger.   Adds a number of jobs here.

Kroger breaking ground on $55M Butler County facility that will bring more than 400 jobs... 

Kroger and Ocado are set to break ground this morning in Butler County for the first-ever U.S. high-tech customer fulfillment center.

Kroger is investing $55 million to build the 335,000-square-foot facility at 6266 Hamilton Lebanon Road in Monroe, which will be the first of 20 in America.It’s expected to create more than 410 new jobs.MORE: Kroger’s robot-powered warehouse to create over 400 jobs in Monroe Kroger purchased the more than 98-acre property along Ohio 63 on March 20 for $3.1 million, according to Butler County Auditor’s Office records.The Ohio Tax Credit Authority voted last December to approve an 8-year, 1.362 percent tax credit for the project. .... " 

More in Forbes with video.

Drop Ship Stress Panel

Does Drop Ship Put too Much Stress on the Supply Chain?
Dan Gilmore in Retailwire.

Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from Supply Chain Digest. .... 

A panel at last month’s Retail Value Chain Federation conference in Scottsdale explored the inventory challenges vendors face supporting drop shipping for their retail partners’ online operations.

Since RVCF is a semi-private function, the identities of the three manufacturers and one 3PL on the panel are kept anonymous.

Many approaches exist for managing drop ship inventories, including:

Having a dedicated inventory in a separate location in the DC;

Having one pool of co-located inventory for a company’s own piece pick/e-commerce business plus the retail drop ship;

Separating inventories logically but storing them together, if allocation and warehouse management systems can handle that.   One doesn’t seem to be preferred over the others.

All the panelists, however, tweak inventory availability information to guard against receiving a drop ship order for which they have no inventory, either because of accuracy issues or because someone else grabbed the merchandise first. One vendor reports no inventory to a retailer when the SKU count reaches five or less.

Almost all retailers want inventory information sent daily, although some want it refreshed multiple times throughout the day. The requirements seem to be based on the companies’ level of IT maturity. ... "

High Cost of eFullfillment

In particular an interesting example, because I buy Tide Pods via Amazon Dash.

" ... Supply Chain Digest  ... Supply Chain News Bites
Supply Chain Graphic of the Week: The Very High Cost of eFulfillment Profitable In-Store Products Move Turn into Losers when Sold On-Line and Delivered to Homes  SCDigest Editorial Staff  .. " 

Lots of interesting details at the link.