Incremental Value Assessment for Assortment Removal Decisions

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Solution Overview

Problem

Traditional approaches for selecting inventory items within a category are limited, often failing to utilize data effectively, neglecting customer purchasing behavior, and not accounting for business requirements, leading to inaccurate and inefficient assortment decisions.

Innovation Solution

An incremental value assessment tool that analyzes historical purchasing data to simulate item removals, determining incremental losses and displaying assessment data via an interactive user interface, allowing for informed assortment decisions.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Measurement precision

If traditional data-limited approaches are used for item selection, then the decision-making process is simpler, but the accuracy of assortment decisions deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaccuracy of assortment decisionsVSAvoidcomplexity of assessment tool

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary simulations of item removals before actual assortment decisions are made. By pre-calculating incremental losses for each item using historical purchasing data, retailers can make informed decisions without complex real-time analysis, thus improving accuracy while managing complexity.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system creates a virtual copy of the purchasing environment using historical data to simulate removal scenarios. This digital twin approach allows accurate assessment of incremental losses without disrupting actual operations, enhancing decision accuracy while keeping the physical system simple.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #26Copying

2Measurement precision

If comprehensive historical purchasing data is analyzed, then the accuracy of incremental value assessment is improved, but the processing time and computational resources increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaccuracy of incremental value assessmentVSAvoidprocessing time for assessment

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

The system pre-processes historical purchasing data to build customer purchase patterns and item relationship models before assessment is needed. This preliminary data preparation enables rapid incremental loss calculations when items are evaluated for removal, improving accuracy without excessive processing time during actual decision-making.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

3Loss of information

If simulations of item removal are performed, then the understanding of incremental loss is improved, but the complexity of the analysis process increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveunderstanding of incremental lossVSAvoidcomplexity of simulation process

Core Design Contradiction:

Loss of informationVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The system implements feedback loops where simulation results inform subsequent assessment iterations. By using historical purchasing data to predict customer responses to item removals and feeding these predictions back into the assessment model, the system provides comprehensive incremental loss understanding while managing analysis complexity through iterative refinement.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

4Measurement precision

If customer purchasing behavior is accounted for, then the accuracy of predicting replacement purchases is improved, but the data requirements and analysis complexity increase

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveaccuracy of predicting replacement purchasesVSAvoidquantity of data required

Core Design Contradiction:

Measurement precisionVSQuantity of substance

Solution Approach 1:

The system extracts and focuses on the most relevant customer purchasing behavior patterns needed for predicting replacements, rather than analyzing all possible data. By identifying and isolating key behavioral indicators from historical data, the system achieves accurate predictions while reducing overall data requirements and analysis complexity.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #2Taking out (Extraction)

Data Source

PatentUS12505464B2Incremental value assessment tool and user interface

Publication Date: 2025.12.23 TARGET BRANDS INC

AI summary

A tool, method, and system for assessing an incremental value of one or more items in an item assortment are disclosed. The tool can receive historical purchasing data, which can include a plurality of customers purchasing one or more items of a plurality of items in an item assortment. The tool can use the historical purchasing data for the plurality of customers to simulate execution of removal of an item from the item assortment, wherein removal of the item from the item assortment causes an incremental loss associated with the item. The tool can order any number of items of the historical purchasing data. The tool can execute scenario simulations, and the tool can account for probabilities when interacting with the historical purchasing data. The tool can display assessment data and receive inputs via an interactive user interface. The tool can launch the assessment data in a downstream application.