Neighborhood Intelligence, the parent company of retailers including Bed Bath & Beyond and The Container Store, is adopting artificial intelligence to bring supply chain planning under a unified system across its retail brands, stores and distribution network.
According to an October 8 press release, the company is working with Relex Solutions to integrate forecasting, replenishment and allocation capabilities across its portfolio. The implementation also includes merchandise financial planning, open-to-buy management and diagnostic tools designed to help teams better coordinate purchasing and inventory decisions.
Neighborhood Intelligence operates more than 335 stores alongside multiple e-commerce brands across North America. By consolidating AI-driven forecasting, replenishment, allocation and merchandise financial planning on a single platform, the retailer expects to establish a consistent view of its business and improve coordination between its different brands.
The move is intended to give teams greater visibility into inventory and demand, helping them maintain product availability, improve sell-through rates and make faster, better-informed decisions. Bringing these functions together should also reduce fragmentation between planning processes and support more consistent execution across the company’s retail network.
Ashley Prado, COO of the retail pillar at Neighborhood Intelligence, said the company needed a solution capable of supporting a business becoming increasingly complex as it expands.
“We needed a platform that could allocate across a business growing fast in scale and complexity, all on one intelligent data layer,” Prado said in a statement.
She added that Relex would help eliminate operational silos between brands by providing teams with a shared environment for planning, allocation and execution, using consistent data and AI tools to simplify and optimize their work.
Retailers are shifting supply chain tech more toward AI
The move from Neighborhood Intelligence is part of a larger trend of retailers seeking to improve supply chain visibility and inventory management with technology from Relex Solutions.
Dollar General said in August it plans to deploy the vendor’s AI platform in its stores and distribution centers. The retailer said the technology will be used for replenishment of stores, coordinating with suppliers, ordering schedules and a host of other operational processes.
Lowe’s has also been working to link its internal supply chain technology with Relex’s forecasting, replenishment and allocation capabilities. The home improvement retailer is looking to bring those functions onto one AI-enabled platform, leveraging an existing partnership between the two companies. The goal is to have a better understanding of demand patterns and optimize inventory management.
Other organizations have implemented Relex solutions to meet certain supply chain needs. Guitar Center has implemented selected models to enhance the management of its distribution network. United Natural Foods, Inc. has implemented the company’s supply chain planning technology.
Convenience store owner Wawa also uses Relex to help address food waste with machine learning capabilities.
Retailers are increasingly adopting integrated planning systems to enhance demand forecasting, synchronize replenishment and reinforce inventory management across these implementations. The rollout is designed to deliver a common data foundation across the diverse Neighborhood Intelligence retail portfolio, and support operations across a large physical and digital network.
