Micro-fulfillment or Micro-execution — definition

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Micro-ful­fill­ment is the idea of plac­ing small-scale ware­hous­es in acces­si­ble urban loca­tions, close to the final con­sumer who makes the pur­chase.

Micro-execution and e‑commerce

Retail moves online… And there is no turn­ing back, we like to say.

Over the past 20 months, con­sumers have turned to e‑commerce for every­thing from toi­let paper to cos­met­ics, com­put­ers to bread makers.

Today, con­sumers expect as lit­tle time as pos­si­ble between click­ing the “Buy Now” but­ton and the pack­age “land­ing on their doorstep.”

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Retail Federation

• 75% of con­sumers expect free ship­ping even for orders under $50.

Accord­ing to the experts of the US Retail Index 2020

• COVID-19 accel­er­at­ed the tran­si­tion to dig­i­tal pro­cure­ment by approx­i­mate­ly five years.

Micro-fulfillment or Micro-execution and retailers

Or how to speed up local­ized store pick­up and com­bine it with the effi­cien­cy of large auto­mat­ed warehouses?

Retail­ers who have been quick to adopt “micro-exe­cu­tion or micro-ful­fill­ment” tac­tics are com­ing out ahead. With­out know­ing it at first, strate­gies such as:

• home deliv­ery,
• online shop­ping,
• in-store pick­up
• and home deliv­ery in 2 days or less… are forms of micro-execution.

In addi­tion, micro ful­fill­ment cen­ters allow retail­ers to lever­age exist­ing stores to increase the effi­cien­cy of online order ful­fill­ment and enable same-day delivery.

What is a micro order management center?

A micro ful­fill­ment cen­ter (or MFC) is a small, some­times high­ly auto­mat­ed ful­fill­ment cen­ter that serves e‑commerce as well as in-store pickups.

An MFC can be located :

• in a store,
• an exist­ing warehouse,
• in a small dis­tri­b­u­tion area or ded­i­cat­ed warehouse

A “mod­est size” micro enforce­ment cen­ter is 1000 m² or less.

Tra­di­tion­al French ware­hous­es have an aver­age sur­face area of 18,500 m².

Articles on Micro-fulfillment in the Supply Chain press

• Sup­ply Chain Mag­a­zine arti­cle of Jan­u­ary 2021 “the spe­cial­ized research firm Inter­act Analy­sis antic­i­pates just over 2,100 micro-ful­fill­ment cen­ters world­wide by 2025. ”
• Voxlog arti­cle of Novem­ber 2021 “What equip­ment at the heart of micro-ful­fill­ment cen­ters ? ”

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