The revoProcess

SAP is a German based software corporation and market leader in the field of enterprise application software. Ever since 1993, one of SAP's focuses has been warehouse management systems, which have helped create a standard for inventorying and stocking. SAP is therefore collaborating with both Stanford University and the University of Applied Sciences Mannheim in order to explore possible improvement opportunities in warehouses.

Through our needfinding activities, which included warehouse visits and interviews with warehouse floor workers and managers, we gained a better picture of our potential users, as well as insights into possible areas of improvement within the warehouse. We found that the largest areas of improvement included: lost or misplaced items, an inexact knowledge of inventory, a lack of space, and most importantly, the unpredictability and waste associated with the returns process. The magnitude of returns has greatly increased since the rise of e- commerce. Approximately 30% of items purchased online are returned compared to 8.9% in traditional brick-and-mortar stores. This amounts to $450 billion dollars annually in returned goods alone and of the goods that are returned, 30-40% are destroyed once they arrive at the warehouse. This is due to the fact that returned purchases pass through, on average, seven pairs of hands before resale (unpackaging, quality inspection, re-stocking, un- stocking, packaging, etc.), and the cost of reprocessing an item can exceed 65% of the cost of the good.

These staggering statistics and feedback from warehouse managers are what led us to rethink the returns process. Team SAP has come up with an innovative solution that will decrease the number of items shipped back to the warehouse; therefore, decreasing required processing time, truck travel and number of items destroyed. The revoProcess is a system that allows one customer to ship the returned item directly to the next customer, rather than back to the warehouse.

The revoProcess will revolutionize the entire returns system. It not only reduces the number of back and forth shipping, thus reducing emissions. For the warehouse, it saves space and reduces the unpredictability of goods being returned to the warehouse.