Retail (Introduction)

This article includes the following parts:

1. Overview
2. Retail Objectives
3. SKU Depth
4. SKU Family & Family Members
5. Valid Family
6. Product Variety (Width)
7. Assortment Group (AG)
8. Display Group (DG)
9. End of Life Policy
10. Allocation Recommendations (Simple Mode)
11. DPLM
12. Flexing Family - Assortment Group Connection

Overview

The Retail module allows the user to view all SKUs monthly average sales data including their relevance for assortment groups and families. In addition, this retail module allows the user to efficiently manage different categories of SKUs by setting its variety target in which the client would be exposed to when visiting a store, it also allows users to view and approve new target recommendations issued by 'Dynamic Target Management’.

The hierarchy of the groups and families is detailed below:

Retail Objectives

The main objective is to improve sales and Inventory turns using the TOC principles, Onebeat will monitor and dynamically manage the variety in the store, it will also display recommendations about ordering more or less from the same category. In this way,the user will have all of the information he needs in order to make the right decision. Making the 'right decision' will definitely increase profits, help us with ordering unused stock (dead-stock) and will help us to figure out exactly what does the customer wants.

SKU Depth

Represent the number of units from the same SKU which will be kept in the store in order to improve availability and inventory turn. Onebeat will manage the depth of each SKU by keeping its buffer (a different buffer for different sizes), DBM algorithm will manage each buffer size dynamically based on the TOC principles.

 

SKU Family & Family Members

'SKU Family' is a group of SKUs of the same product while 'Family Member' is a specific type of SKU in that product, having these kinds of Families and members will make it easier to collect information and to control the variety in the store.

 

For Example

Assume that we have a fashion store with many products and categories. One family of items could be Men elegant orange shirt, this item exists in several sizes which represent the family members, as seen at the picture above, this orange shirt 'family' has several members such as large, medium or small.

Valid Family

The amount of inventory of SKUs from the same family which is enough to consider this SKU family as valid, Onebeat would make sure that the Variety Target will always be fulfilled with valid families.

Example - Valid offer 

Assume that we sell a specific model of the blue shirt in several sizes, we want to make sure that we have at least three sizes in this family of shirts so that when a customer comes into our store he would find at least three different sizes of shirts and will be able to choose between them.

 

Product Variety (Width)

Onebeat should manage the offering to the customers in order to improve sales for each category in each store, in this way we can ensure that not only the required inventory is in stock but also that we have enough variety per category. The quantity of different products of the same assortment group represents the width, we can set a minimum quantity of width in order to promise a wide variety of products in the store.

Assortment Group

Assortment Group (AG) is a group of family SKUs that have common characteristics, it represents different types in the same category. Each AG will have a variety target for different valid SKU families. Variety Target represents the number of different SKU Families we wish the client would be exposed to when visiting a store. Onebeat will dynamically set for each AG the right variety target based on comparison of AG consumption to other AGs in the DG.

For Example

Assume we have a fashion store, which sales different types of polo shirts, the number of different shirts represents the variety (width) of the 'Assortment Group' while the size we have from each shirt represents the depth. We can set its variety target (width) to be at least 4, which means there should be at least 4 different polo shirts colors (which represents different kinds of families).

 

Display Groups

A group of several Assortment Groups which represent different categories of the same theme. Each Display group has boundaries of a maximum and minimum amount of inventory or cost, Onebeat will alert when one of these boundaries exceeded. The purpose of the Display Groups is to make sure that the inventory isn't too high or too low.

For Example

Assume we have Display Group 'Men' at stock location CWH with quantity minimum of 800 and maximum of 1600:

The total quantity of all SKUs at CWH which belong to 'Men' equal to 2,700 is exceeding the maximum value (1,600) and therefore colored in red.

End of Life Policy

The EOL Policy's purpose is to stop replenishing SKUs that weren't sold well and instead, replenish new products that will be easier to sell. This goal can be achieved by setting for each SKU its End of Life Policy. Users can define EOL criteria such as expiration date or minimum consumption during a limited period. Once Onebeat recognize that a SKU has reached its EOL it will alert the user and will recommend to stop its replenishment. After Onebeat stops the SKU's replenishment, its inventory starts to run out and soon becomes not available, then Onebeat will recommend ordering a similar bestseller SKU.

Allocation Recommendations (Simple Mode)

The Allocation Recommendation's goal is to calculate the number of families in which Onebeat should recommend to order for fulfilling the Assortment groups variety targets.

Onebeat will calculate the gap between the Variety target and the current valid families that exists under this Assortment group and stock location.

Once the gap has been calculated for each Assortment group and stock location, Onebeat will suggest new families that do not exist under this stock location and Assortment group. Families with the highest 'Sales Estimation' value will be chosen automatically although users will be able to change this selection by selecting different families.

DPLM

The Dynamic Product Life cycle Management (DPLM) module is a flexible mechanism that allows managing and monitoring product behavior according to states, rules, and actions set by Onebeat Admin users.

A “Policy” is the fundamental entity by which a set of states is defined indicating how the product is behaving. Each policy is built upon as many states as necessary and each state has a set of conditions that on turning “True” transfers the product to another state. Moreover, each condition may be followed by a set of actions that are performed once the condition is true.

A “Product” is relating to a family of SKUs residing in a specific stock location. Hence, the DPLM is managing and monitoring each family in each stock location individually.

On every Load & Recalculate, and on weekdays that are set as active for the DPLM, all products that are associated with a policy are recalculated to determine if they should switch to another state, and what actions should be performed. The Load & Recalculate results can be browsed in Melody DPLM forms, and non-automatic actions are set as pending allowing users to accept or reject them.

Flexing Family - Assortment Group Connection

In Onebeat we have an option to define different sets of families in different stock locations, this feature enables to assign families to more than on assortment group, this will be enabled as long as the family is defined under only one assortment group for each stock location. Meaning that each stock location may be connected to any assortment group as long as each family is defined under these AG's appears no more than once under the specific stock location.