08 May
The Square-Root Law of Inventory Pooling Is Wrong More Often Than It’s Right
The simple answer to whether the Square-Root Law of Inventory Pooling is “wrong more often than it’s right” is that it’s generally not wrong in its fundamental mathematical derivation, but it’s often misapplied or used without considering its underlying assumptions.
08 May
Available-to-Promise Under Concurrency: Why Your Reservation Logic Loses Money on Flash-Sale Days
Let’s talk about something that might be costing your business a pretty penny, especially when those exciting flash sales hit: your “Available-to-Promise” (ATP) system when it’s battling against a wave of concurrent users. In short, if your reservation logic isn’t
08 May
Service Level vs Fill Rate: Stop Conflating Type 1 and Type 2, and What Your ’98 Percent’ Actually Promises
You’ve probably heard terms like “service level” and “fill rate” thrown around in the world of inventory and supply chain management. They sound pretty similar, right? Like they’re just different ways of saying the same thing – that you’ll have
08 May
Lead Time Is Not a Number: Modeling Transit, Customs, and Dock Variance as a Compound Distribution
Lead time isn’t just a single number we can neatly jot down. It’s much more complex, a dynamic element with various moving parts, making it better described as a distribution rather than a fixed value. Thinking of lead time as
08 May
Warehouse Slotting as a Constraint Programming Problem: Modeling Travel Time, Velocity Decay, and Affinity in OR-Tools
Thinking about how to best organize a warehouse can be a real head-scratcher. It’s not just about putting things wherever they fit; it’s about making sure your goods are stored in a way that minimizes wasted time, reduces effort, and
08 May
Forecasting Intermittent Demand: Why Prophet and ARIMA Quietly Fail on Slow-Movers (and What to Use Instead)
So, you’ve got a bunch of products with sales that are, let’s say, a bit sporadic. Think spare parts, seasonal items, or that one niche gadget everyone forgot about until suddenly, everyone wants it. You’re trying to forecast demand for
08 May
Lot Genealogy at Scale: Graph Database Patterns for FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and FSMA 204 Traceability
So, you’re wondering if graph databases can actually help manage lot genealogy for things like FDA 21 CFR Part 11 and FSMA 204 traceability, especially when you’re dealing with a lot of information. The short answer is yes, and they
08 May
SKU Master Data Deduplication with Sentence Embeddings: Beyond Levenshtein on Item Descriptions
Getting rid of duplicate SKUs in your master data is key to keeping things organized and efficient, and we’re seeing some really smart new ways to do it. Instead of just looking at how similar two item descriptions are character
08 May
Bitemporal Inventory Ledgers: Answering ‘What Did We Believe Stock Was On Date X, As Of Date Y?’
Ever found yourself staring at current inventory numbers and wondering, “What did we actually think we had on hand on that specific day last month, given what we knew then?” It’s a surprisingly common puzzle, especially when you need to
08 May
The Bullwhip Effect in API Terms: Latency, Backpressure, and Why Your Demand Signal Distorts Across Integrations
Ever feel like a small change at one end of your system causes a wild swing somewhere else? That’s the bullwhip effect, and when you’re dealing with APIs, it can be a real headache. This isn’t about supply chains with
08 May
Cycle Count Sampling Is Statistically Indefensible: A Bayesian Approach to Inventory Accuracy
Let’s talk about cycle counting and whether it’s really as “statistically indefensible” as some might suggest. The short answer is, for most practical inventory management purposes, it’s not indefensible. In fact, it’s a well-established and generally effective method. The idea
08 May
Decoupling from SAP MM: A Strangler-Fig Migration Pattern for Inventory Subsystems
So, you’re wondering if you can break away from SAP MM, specifically for your inventory subsystems, without turning your entire operation upside down. The answer is a pretty firm yes, and a neat way to do it is by using