Inventory Optimization

Inventory is the moment when a forecast stops being a spreadsheet exercise and starts costing money. A demand model can look elegant in validation. It can shave RMSE by a few decimals, win a leaderboard, and make the data science team briefly feel like civilization has advanced. Then the warehouse over-orders slow-moving stock, the store misses fast-moving items, and the finance team discovers that “better accuracy” is not the same thing as better cash flow. ...

A supply chain rarely fails because one objective was neglected in a spreadsheet. It fails because the spreadsheet quietly pretended the objective would stay still. Yesterday the priority was margin. Today it is carbon exposure. Tomorrow a route becomes expensive, a supplier becomes unreliable, demand arrives in a pattern that looks suspiciously like a sine wave wearing a hard hat, and the “optimal” plan starts ageing like milk. ...