PurposeThis paper aims to identify customer behavior with regard to out‐of‐stocks (OOS) of perishable products (focused on bakery bread) and the resulting inventory performance for these perishable products.Design/methodology/approachInsights on how consumers behave when their preferred bread product is OOS are derived based on 3,800 customer interviews performed in three stores of a large Dutch grocery retail chain. Next to this, additional logistical information was measured on regular moments with respect to the shelf availability per stock‐keeping unit during the day and to waste at the end of the day.FindingsThe customer behavior with regard to perishables is observed to be different from that for the non‐perishable items. The key observation is that customers have a high willingness to substitute. The incorporation of the obtained knowledge of the observed consumer buying behavior into the existing automated store ordering (ASO) systems is discussed. In the current ASO systems, no distinction is made between perishable and non‐perishable products, as it is primarily designed and used for the non‐perishables. The authors show that the current ASO can be enriched and extended by taking into account some extra crucial parameters which are based on the observed consumer behavior.Originality/valueOne common factor in the research papers published so far is that they primarily looked into the customer behavior for non‐perishable items. The current paper on‐hand extends these works towards perishable items with a focus on bakery bread.

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For all kinds of reasons, rework, i.e. the transformation of products not ful lling preset speci cations into products that do, is an important issue in process industries. Despite a considerable amount of published research on planning and control of rework, and in addition many papers referring to the existence of rework in the process industries, hardly any attention has been paid to the consequences of many process industries speci c characteristics for execution, planning and control of rework operations. Here are identi ed the characteristics of the process industries that in uence the possibilities for rework in these industries, based on a framework provided by Flapper and Jensen (International Journal of Production Research, 1999, to be published). How the available operations management literature assists in determining operational strategies for planning and control of rework in process industries is assessed.

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Determination of safety stocks in a lost sales inventory system with periodic review, positive lead-time, lot-sizing and a target fill rate. (BETA publicatie : working papers; Vol. 336). Technische Universiteit Eindhoven.