Timing

The goods are in the store, counted and booked, and the shelf is empty because shelf stocking follows the shift schedule and not demand. Of all goods, 98 to 99 percent reach the store’s stockroom, on the last meters from stockroom to shelf availability drops to 90 to 93 percent, as ECR Europe measured. The stretch on which replenishment is lost is the shortest in the entire supply chain.

The rhythm is known. Out-of-shelf cases accumulate in the early evening, when the day has emptied the shelves and shelf stocking only comes at night, and on Friday and Saturday, which together account for 43 percent of weekly revenue and have to make do without matching deliveries. The start of the week is critical because the goods have been delivered but are not yet on the shelf. And the first days of a promotion are the most difficult, because replenishment does not yet follow demand.

Cortex reads the footfall forecast for the next hours, the sell-through per item and the open refill tasks in the same time grid and places shelf stocking before the peak, not in it. The promotional area is full when the first customers of the promotion arrive, and the aisle is clear when footfall rises.

Sequence

The list is too long for the hour, and the fastest ten percent of items cause 45 percent of all out-of-shelf cases. Anyone who stocks the roll container from top to bottom fills the slow mover while the top seller is missing, and staff work on items that no one misses.

Cortex orders the open refill tasks by sell-through, margin, promotion status and shelf capacity and issues them to the role in the store with item, shelf location, quantity and reason. The shift knows where to start, and the sequence follows the revenue passing the gap in this hour.

Dock

Before the shelf comes the dock. The delivery arrives without notice or too late, receiving falls into the peak, roll containers block the aisle and backroom, returns stand in the way, and the goods cannot be found in the stockroom because the container holds single units instead of full case packs. Most retailers forgo a detailed check at goods receipt for lack of time, and what goes missing there unnoticed is missing from the shelf later.

Cortex connects delivery notices and expected arrival with the footfall in the store and backroom utilization and schedules receiving and shelf stocking in the quiet hour. Goods are requested specifically instead of searched for, and refilling from the backroom during opening hours, the most expensive method because customers interrupt the process, remains the exception instead of the rule.

Impact

The metrics of this solution are time spans. Time from dock to shelf, backroom-to-shelf time, OOS minutes per item, shelf availability at the start of the peak, cartons per refill hour. Today only a fifth of out-of-shelf cases are refilled in less than eight hours, just as many remain empty for more than three days, and each of these spans can be shortened as soon as it is measured.

Every location has its own rhythm of delivery schedule, opening hours and footfall profile, and Cortex maintains it as a set of rules per store. Across the network, it becomes clear where the gap begins at the dock, where in the backroom and where in the shift schedule, and replenishment turns from a shift task into a figure that can be managed hour by hour.