Sainsbury’s smartens and streamlines supply chain strategy

Britain’s second-largest supermarket retailer is centralizing supply chain management on an artificial intelligence (AI) platform.

Sainsbury’s has selected the Luminate end-to-end supply chain platform from Blue Yonder (formerly JDA Software Inc.) as the foundation of its planned supply chain transformation. The retailer will deploy the AI-powered Luminate platform to streamline supply chain workflows such as demand forecasting and replenishment, digital control tower, space management, macro space planning, range management, warehouse management, labor management, and yard management.

Blue Yonder developers will partner with in-house engineers from Sainsbury’s tech department to create an autonomous, self-learning supply chain platform with advanced machine learning (ML) capabilities. As a result, Sainsbury’s seeks to enable store associates to spend more time on the store floor and serving customers. 

Sainsbury’s chose Blue Yonder for its ML capabilities and SaaS-based enterprise supply chain solutions. Luminate includes ML-based forecasting and ordering solutions designed to help stores better manage fresh and perishable products. It also includes the Luminate Control Tower crisis control center, designed to offer complete supply chain visibility, orchestration, and collaboration across the end-to-end supply chain and prescribe more automated business decisions.

“We relentlessly seek to improve the way we serve the needs of our customers,” said John Elliott, CTO – retail at Sainsbury’s. “Having a predictive, autonomous and adaptive supply chain powered by world-class technology products and Sainsbury’s tech engineering means we can show up for our customers whenever and however they shop with us.”

Sainsbury’s operates more than 2,000 stores across its Sainsbury’s, Argos and Habitat brands, and also operates a number of wholesale partnerships globally.