Company Sponsor: Far East Flora Market
Far East Flora Market was founded in 1965 and is a subsidiary of Far East Flora Holdings. It is a wholesaler that supplies a wide range of fresh cut flowers, foliages, floral accessories and dried flowers etc. Its customer base includes the general public, florists, religions organizations and event planners and so on. Customers can either place same-day delivery orders through the online website, or they can visit the shop for self-collection. Customers can also walk in to purchase the flowers at its premise as well.
Title: Delivery Optimization
Project Team: Chen Rong, Melody Choo Kai Xin, Eng Yee Jie, Hafizah Bte Mohamed Naser, Soh Qi Wen and Soh Yi Ling
Far East Flora Market is currently having difficulties in optimizing its delivery operations especially during peak periods such as Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Chinese New Year etc. This is due to the company taking in as many orders as it can. It currently has two in-house lorries and three regular couriers, however these are not sufficient for the company to handle the large amount of orders during peak periods. Furthermore, since Far East Flora is unable to maximize their daily delivery capacity, it is unable to provide the external couriers a gauge on how many orders they need to external drivers to deliver. As such, courier companies are reluctant to establish long term partnerships with Far East Flora and are overcharged at a higher rate for last minute delivery orders. Thus, Far East Flora is keen to find out the amount of orders they can take in for each festival.
Far East Flora Market commissioned us to help the business optimize their delivery system during festivals as they did not make use of the data to properly forecast for their delivery slots.
Our project breaks into three major stages: data cleansing and pre-processing, model building and visualization. We first utilized R studio and Excel to clean the data. Next, we used R for linear regression analysis and excel for time series analysis and optimization modeling. Lastly, Power BI was used to build dashboard for visualization purposes.
In the earlier stage of the project, data preprocessing was the most challenging part. As our client did not analyze their data, the raw data provided to us was thus unstandardized and there was missing data in some entries. However, after clarifications with our client and consultation with professors, we eventually managed to solve these problems.
As a result, using Power BI dashboard and linear regression would help Far East Flora Market to better understand their business situation, qualify their domain knowledge. This would allow them to be aware of their capacity. This can also provide trends or factors to look out for that the purchase department can use to buy certain types of flowers depending on the visualization of sales analysis.
The optimization model can be used to better gauge the number of vans they need to outsource. By doing so, overcharging by external couriers could be avoided. This would allow Far East Flora Market to better allocate resources, as the team would have a choice to either limit the amount of pre-orders beforehand or provide the exceeded figures (beyond their internal drivers’ capacity) to external couriers for a cheaper quote. This will allow them to enjoy economies of scale by reducing cost and opening doors to partnership with logistic companies.
The showcase poster details the actionable insights for the client.
Click image to enlarge poster
Teamwork and communication are equally important for this project. We felt that the scheduled weekly meetings via zoom were effective as we updated each other on our progress and allocated tasks accordingly. This also helped us to better manage our time. Before our weekly meeting, we also helped each other to look through the assigned parts. If any of us encounter problems, we will help to solve it together as a team. We also actively checked with our client on doubts we have regarding the data she has provided and kept her updated on our progress.
