Retail & E-commerce / Merchandising
On-Shelf Availability (OSA) OSA
The share of the time a product a customer wants is actually ON THE SHELF and buyable, not merely shown as in stock by the system.
The fork, why two teams get different numbers
System in-stock versus shelf in-stock is the fork, and the gap between them is PHANTOM inventory: the file says units are on hand, but they are misplaced, in the back room, mis-scanned, or shrink that was never written off, so the shelf is empty while the report is green.
In the Metric Library
- The full fork, both definitions worked all the way through
- The trap that makes the number lie, on a real export
- Every formula variant, spelled out
- The reconciliation anchor, what to tie it to and when to refuse
Reference: ECR on-shelf availability / retail phantom-inventory research ยท GS1 (reference)