Multi-store retail: inventory and replenishment signals

Situation

Stock positions lagged reality, store managers often heard about gaps from shoppers first, and central merchandising did not have a single alert rhythm everyone could trust.

What we focused on

• Signal quality: Reconciled timing differences between channels before automating “low stock” noise.
• Thresholds by category: Seasonal and per-SKU logic so fashion didn’t use the same rules as consumables.
• Runbooks: What to do when a supplier API failed, retries, fallbacks, and human paging.

Outcome

Fewer emergency transfers and a calmer weekly ops rhythm backed by data the team trusted.