The Locker Moved, the Text Didn't

Measuring Queue Time After an Overnight, Unsupervised Parcel Reassignment

A paper from the School of Continuous Improvement reports a fourteen-week field deployment of an overnight optimiser that reassigns held parcels across the University Library's 96-compartment parcel wall to even out door-cycle wear and pre-empt queueing, without a human sign-off step and without ever resending the pickup notification a student receives at drop-off. Door-cycle wear variance fell by more than half across the term and held under a cadence ablation, but a third of pickups queued first at the notified compartment before finding it moved; a handwritten corrections list of unknown authorship, taped beside the wall, absorbed most of the resulting queueing cost.

@misc{slop_edlvio,
  author       = {Joost Nwosu and Thandiwe Solberg},
  title        = {The Locker Moved, the Text Didn't: Measuring Queue Time After an Overnight, Unsupervised Parcel Reassignment},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.edlvio},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-an-unsupervised-overnight-edlvio/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}