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Replenishment Intelligence: Store Signals

What are Store Signals?​

Store Signals are the risk layer of Replenishment Intelligence. They answer:

"Where is reality diverging from plan, store by store, right now?"

Demand Signals tell you what should sell. Store Signals tell you where the network is unhealthy - where an item is about to stock out, where inventory is piling up, where sales suddenly dropped or spiked. These come from store-level anomaly detection and sharpen every reorder decision.

The store-level signals we surface​

Each item-store combination is checked against a set of supply-and-sales health rules. The business-facing signals are:

  • Low Weeks of Supply - inventory is running thin relative to demand; high stockout risk.
  • High Weeks of Supply - far more inventory on hand than demand justifies; overstock risk.
  • Zero Sales with Inventory - stock is on hand but nothing is selling; a possible shelf, listing, or localized demand problem.
  • Sales Drop - a meaningful, unexpected fall in sales versus the recent baseline.
  • Sales Spike - an unusual surge in sales that can drain supply faster than planned.
  • Inventory Jump - a sudden, unexpected change in on-hand inventory.
  • Traited with Zero Inventory - the store is set up to carry the item but currently has none; a direct lost-sales situation.

Each signal carries a severity so the most urgent situations rise to the top.

How the business user sees the impact​

Store Signals are rolled up into business terms the user acts on:

  • Revenue at risk - dollars exposed by stockout-type conditions.
  • Inventory at risk - dollars exposed by overstock and slow-moving conditions.
  • Stockout risks - count of item-store situations heading toward empty shelves.
  • Overstock exposure - count of item-store situations carrying excess.
  • Stores affected - how wide the issue spreads across the network.
  • Critical alerts - the highest-severity situations that need attention first.

Weeks of Supply, in plain terms​

Weeks of Supply (WOS) is how many weeks current inventory will last at the expected rate of sale. It is the core health metric:

  • Too low - you will run out before the next delivery; reorder, and reorder more.
  • Too high - capital is frozen on the shelf; slow down or stop ordering.

Replenishment Intelligence uses WOS on both sides - to push orders up where supply is short and to hold orders back where supply is long.

How Store Signals drive replenishment​

The baseline need from Demand Signals is adjusted by Store Signals:

  • Stores trending toward stockout get reorder quantities pushed up.
  • Stores carrying overstock get reorder quantities pulled down or suppressed.
  • Zero-inventory-but-traited situations are surfaced as immediate lost-sales recoveries.

Why it matters for business​

  • Protects sales by catching stockouts before the shelf is empty.
  • Frees working capital by flagging overstock instead of reordering into it.
  • Quantifies exposure in dollars and store counts, not abstract scores.
  • Focuses scarce attention on the critical few among thousands of combinations.

For the detection methodology and the full rule set, see the Anomaly Detection documentation in Retail AI. This tab focuses on how those anomalies become replenishment risk signals.