AI demand forecasting and automated replenishment for retail

Walmart Global Tech describes how Walmart's supply chain systems use AI and forecasting models, drawing on signals such as historical sales, seasonality, local demand and weather, to decide which products are needed and where to position them across stores and fulfillment centers before customers order. Walmart says it combines AI foresight with human expertise to refine its demand forecasting, and once an order is placed the Walmart Fulfillment Engine takes over. Walmart gives no forecasting accuracy or inventory figures.

Aeon Retail, the general merchandise store operator of the Aeon group, developed, with support from IBM Japan, a demand forecasting and automated ordering system it calls AI Order and rolled it out to about 380 Aeon and Aeon Style stores from May 2023, starting with short shelf life items such as processed fish paste, tofu, bread and desserts and extended it to more chilled items, chilled deli dishes and salads from June 2024. The system learns from footfall forecasts, past sales, day of week, price, temperature and promotions to propose an order quantity automatically, embedded into the existing ordering system so staff need no new training.

Best Buy Canada, the consumer electronics retailer with more than 300 stores and two distribution centers across Canada managing about 2.1 million SKUs, selected RELEX Solutions to optimize forecasting and replenishment across its retail network. RELEX's announcement, quoting Best Buy Canada's VP of Inventory and Merchandising Operations, says the goal is to improve inventory visibility, automate planning processes and support omnichannel operations across stores and distribution centers. No implementation timeline or measured result is disclosed yet.

Dollar General, the mass merchandising discount retailer with more than 21,000 stores and 34 distribution centers managing about 18,000 SKUs, is partnering with RELEX Solutions to implement forecasting, replenishment and allocation capabilities across its North American operations in a single system. RELEX's announcement, quoting Dollar General's SVP of Global Inventory Management, says the aim is a practical way to use AI in planning so store replenishment, ordering schedules, lead times, supplier coordination and fulfillment sit in one place, with sales patterns built directly into the planning process. No implementation timeline or measured result is disclosed yet.

Philippine Seven Corporation (PSC), the exclusive operator of 7-Eleven convenience stores in the Philippines, is now using forecasting and replenishment from RELEX Solutions to plan across its 27 distribution centers, delivered together with local implementation partner genieX. RELEX's announcement says the rollout replaces PSC's spreadsheet based planning with automated planning driven by data, meant to improve supplier collaboration, increase fill rates and raise operational efficiency, quoting PSC's chair and executives from both RELEX and genieX. No measured result is disclosed yet.

Albert Heijn, the leading supermarket chain in the Netherlands with more than 1,200 stores, forecasts daily sales for more than 15 million store and item combinations more than five weeks ahead, which its VP of Product Operations describes as almost one billion predictions a day, with the aim of bringing just enough stock to each store and cutting food waste. The retailer says it hopes forecasting will cut its total food waste by more than 10%, a target rather than a result. A related Dynamic Markdown initiative raises discounts on electronic shelf labels during the day for products close to their date, and the story says it now saves 250,000 kilos of wasted food per year.

OXXO, the FEMSA owned small format food retailer with more than 23,500 stores across Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Peru, selected RELEX Solutions in September 2023 to raise the accuracy of its store demand forecasts as part of a digital transformation, adding weather based forecasting on top of the standard model. The pilot went live in April 2024 for 13 key product categories representing 60% of OXXO's sales, then expanded to more categories through May and June 2024. RELEX's case study reports forecast accuracy gains by category, from 2.3 percentage points for groceries up to 8 percentage points for beer, and quotes OXXO's Demand Planning and Supply Chain Director on cutting manual forecasting work by consolidating it into one system.

One Stop, the Tesco owned convenience chain with more than 900 company and franchise stores in Great Britain, moved store and distribution center forecasting and replenishment to RELEX in 2019; RELEX reports that this first rollout raised store availability by 1.9 percentage points and cut fresh spoilage value by 4%. One Stop then added machine learning forecasting to handle short shelf life lines, weather driven demand such as ice and cannibalization between promoted products.

RELEX reports that within four months forecast accuracy rose by 3.17 percentage points at product and week level and 1.82 points at product, store and week level, and One Stop's Head of Supply Chain says availability of ultra fresh products with under three days of shelf life rose 8.5% with no corresponding rise in spoilage.

The UK grocer Morrisons replaced its manual model of stock replenishment with Blue Yonder's AI powered demand forecasting and replenishment solution, built on Microsoft Azure, which predicts customer demand and orders the right level of stock for its stores. Blue Yonder's customer page says it helped Morrisons increase shelf availability of more than 29,000 products in 130 categories across its 500 stores and headlines a 30% on shelf availability improvement. Technology Record, a publication produced with Microsoft's support, reported in January 2018 that the solution cut shelf gaps in Morrisons stores by 30% and stockholding in store by two to three days.