Method and System For Retail Store Supply Chain Sales Forecasting and Replenishment Shipment Determination

Abstract

A time-phased forecasting and replenishment system (20) for a retail supply chain for inventory management, financial management, capacity planning and transportation planning. A computer(s) (28) create time-phased plans for one or more retail facilities, such as various types of retail stores (23) and / or various types of suppliers (24). The system calculates projected sales for each product at each facility and calculates projected replenishment shipments between facilities and suppliers a specified number of weeks into the future. The calculated forecasts and replenishments are done in ways that account for the unique needs of retail organizations, and allow efficient processing and storage of the large data volumes typical in many retail organizations. In particular the system has specified logic for handling low-volume products, and has a transportation and capacity planning component that benefits retail stores. Also, the system is designed to operate on a continuous basis if desired.

Description

RELATED APPLICATION DATA[0001]This application is a divisional of application Ser. No. 09 / 899,593, filed Jul. 5, 2001, entitled “Method and System For Retail Store Supply Chain Sales Forecasting and Replenishment Shipment Determination,” which application is incorporated herein in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The invention relates to a computer-implemented method and system for simulating the business of retail organizations for the purposes of better managing inventories transportation, capacity, and finances at both retail organizations and / or suppliers. More particularly, the invention is a method and system for forecasting product sales in a retail store supply chain and determining replenishment shipments to various entities in the supply chain.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]The typical retail organization uses a reorder point system to manage inventories at the store-level. These are execution systems rather than planning systems. They review products and if the ...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention is a computer system that helps plan shipments and transportation for products in a retail store supply chain. It includes a replenishment system that determines when to ship products to the store, and a capacity planning system that generates plans for how many products to ship based on the replenishment system's data. The system also includes a transportation planning system that helps determine the best way to move the products from the warehouse to the store. Overall, this system helps optimize the supply chain and improve efficiency for retail stores.

Problems solved by technology

However, these systems are designed to meet the needs of a manufacturing organization, and have not proved suitable for a retailer's needs.

These systems are not able to process the large data volumes typical of most retail organizations.

Additionally, manufacturing systems are not designed to deal with certain needs that are specific to retailers.

Systems designed for tens of thousands of stock keeping locations could theoretically be made to work for a hundred million stock keeping locations, but as a result of limitations in computing resources and time available to complete the computing operations this has not been achieved in actual practice.

Additionally, using systems not designed to economically process this amount of data would force the retailer to purchase significantly more computer processing power than would be needed with a system designed for these volumes (assuming such a system existed).

For this reason, current time-phased planning systems do not provide the same capabilities for low-volume products.

Known time-phased planning logic for calculating planned replenishment shipments for low-volume products typically gives an inaccurate picture of total demand for the product, of total demand for transportation planning, of total demand for capacity planning, and of total demand for financial planning.

The forecast of 0.01 units is so small that it is not appropriate to send one product to the store in anticipation of this sale.

However, this “bunching up” does not represent a valid simulation of what is likely to happen.

For this reason, the traditional logic of time-phased replenishment planning does not handle low-volume products well.

Consequently, when people in one department attempt to work with people in other departments, a good deal of unproductive time is often spent reconciling the numbers in one system to the numbers in one of the other systems.

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