TOPTEN, one of Israel’s leading fashion accessories chains, has made that equation work across its 65 stores by turning to AI-powered inventory optimization. With new products hitting shelves at least twice a week, the company needed a system that could think fast, act faster, and adapt in real time. Read full article
Last week, leading experts from academia, industry, and regulatory backgrounds gathered to discuss the legal and commercial implications of AI explainability, with a particular focus on its impact in retail. Hosted by Prof. Shlomit Yaniski Ravid of Yale Law and Fordham Law, the panel brought together thought leaders to address the growing need for transparency in AI-driven decision-making, emphasizing the importance of ensuring AI operates within ethical and legal parameters and the need to “open the black box” of AI decision-making.
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For over two weeks, Israel has been struggling with a nationwide drug shortage after a failed ERP migration by Novolog, one of the country’s exclusive pharmaceutical distributor. The transition to a new inventory management system was meant to streamline operations but instead paralyzed supply chains, leaving pharmacies unable to stock essential medications, including chemotherapy treatments, hypertension drugs, and psychiatric prescriptions.
Date: 10.01.2025 Retail Meets AI:
Picture this: a retailer runs out of its top-selling product right before the holiday rush, leaving shelves empty and customers frustrated. On the other side of the globe, a manufacturer struggles with excess inventory piling up due to unexpected shipping delays. These real-world supply chain nightmares highlight the critical need for stock optimization—a strategy that keeps businesses agile, profitable, and ready for anything.
Date: 07.01.2025 The Supply Chainer:
In many companies, inventory is often managed with a single, complex Excel sheet—an approach that only a few employees fully understand. This reliance on spreadsheets can create significant challenges, especially when it comes to optimizing stock levels, forecasting demand, and ensuring timely deliveries. Inventory management is crucial for streamlining operations, minimizing excess stock, and ensuring product availability, but managing it manually with Excel makes the process prone to inefficiencies and costly mistakes.
Date: 20.12.2024 The Supply Chainer:
Supply Chain Optimization Leaders: Top Companies Driving Inventory Innovation
Picture this: a retailer runs out of its top-selling product right before the holiday rush, leaving shelves empty and customers frustrated. On the other side of the globe, a manufacturer struggles with excess inventory piling up due to unexpected shipping delays. These real-world supply chain nightmares highlight the critical need for stock optimization—a strategy that keeps businesses agile, profitable, and ready for anything.
Date: 04.12.2024 Manufacturing & Logistics IT:
Urbanica, a leading value-for-money retail chain operating in Israel, offers a diverse range of products including clothing for the entire family, shoes, fashion and home accessories. With 29 stores, many spanning approximately 1,800 square meters, and an online shop, the chain faces some unique supply chain challenges.
Date: 06.11.2024 Retail Technology Review:
As retailers gear up for the annual Black Friday rush this month, Supply Chain Managers, Production Planners and Inventory Managers face unique challenges in preparing for one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
Today’s resources are becoming more and more limited, and at the same time, the population is growing. We are required to find new ways of managing resources and production. Because of this, the need to reuse already utilized resources is increasing, which has in turn led to the growth of the second-hand market and recycling of existing materials.
Many leading fashion companies understand that fast fashion has grown over the past few decades and is turning into a new reality and cycle of trends accompanied by the processing and use of old clothing. For businesses, there is a growing need to appeal to customers in a different way to reflect the ever-increasing trend of sustainable fashion.
Thus, a new market is emerging among the leading fashion companies, which have begun to develop new platforms for selling not only new clothes, but also second-hand pieces that customers bring in. In this way, fashion companies are able to maintain their place as fashion leaders through a new approach to customers who understand that the global trend is changing.
This is a beautiful presentation of the new supply chain trends we may see more and more of in the new world of retail.
Uncertainties and variabilities are inherent in supply chains (and in life, I know…) and are often translated to fears. Fears of both phenomena often push people to extreme reactions – for example, on the one hand, fear of losing sales drives companies to overstock, ending up with significant surpluses. On the other hand, the fear of cash flow pressure drives companies to cut expenses wherever they can, such as holding adequate inventories, ending with severe shortages (ultimately damaging sales in the process and creating further cash flow issues). Oscillating between extreme reactions is common in many companies reacting to the fears above.
The typical way to address risk is to try and react fast to the threat; that would be a reasonable reaction unless we overshoot/undershoot the magnitude of the response. These extremes in the magnitude of response create havoc in systems.
Suppose we agree that the drivers for creating risk are a given and cannot be avoided. What should be the correct reaction to the inherent risk in doing business? What are the reactions, and what magnitude should we adopt in dealing with these challenges?
The answer is to hold the right buffers (safeties) in the system. These shock absorbers of resources, capacity, time, suppliers, inventories, cash, people, etc., are the only way a company can build a system that can effectively handle uncertainty and variability. Ensuring buffers are dynamic, considering the specific constraints and ongoing changes, is an effective way to make a robust and nimble system that deals and reacts promptly to the volatile behavior resulting from fears and prevents the damaging effects of extreme reactions.