Unlike common inventory solutions, multi-echelon inventory optimisation performs a simultaneous, global optimisation over a very large assortment of Stock-Keeping Unit Locations (SKU-Ls). Using the right technology typically generates € multi-million returns, reducing stock outs by 30-70 percent and improving inventory turns by 20-80 percent.

ToolsGroup inventory optimisation solution is demand-driven. Its advanced statistical models of demand and inventory behavior overcome poor traditional inventory theory approximations to guarantee adherence between planned targets and actual results. This allows our customers to achieve a unique competitive advantage: customer service level excellence (up to 99+ %) and with less inventory. No other inventory optimisation software can consistently do this.

ToolsGroup software is also unique in its ability to simultaneously solve the multi-echelon inventory problem in three dimensions:

It optimizes along multiple echelons of the supply chain, balancing between upstream and downstream inventory to identify the most globally efficient inventory. A few other packages offer this, but not while guaranteeing service levels above 95%.

It performs "mix optimisation". Other packages require the user to empirically and manually define different groups of SKUs and then assign the same "one size fits all" service level to all the SKUs in each group. ToolsGroup's mix optimisation instead optimally assigns different service targets to each individual SKU in each location to achieve the same aggregate service levels with much less inventory.

A third unique capability is the simultaneous optimisation of safety stock and cycle stock values. Unlike other packages that ignore the relationship between lot-size and safety stock, ToolsGroup software calculates optimal lot sizes that are a function of the targeted service levels and safety stocks that are a function of both the service level target and the optimal lot-size.