The Inventory Problem
Why $1.8 trillion gets locked in bad inventory decisions — and how the tech stack tries to fix it.
Opening strategy that shapes the entire game. Understanding inventory fundamentals is your fuseki — the positions you set up now determine everything downstream.
Retail loses $1.8 trillion annually to 'inventory distortion' — the combination of stockouts (lost sales) and overstock (tied-up capital). Tightly's thesis: this is a forecasting failure, not a logistics failure.
Five acronyms every inventory PM must understand cold: ERP, PLM, OMS, WMS, and 3PL. They describe the systems that manage products from design to delivery — and where Tightly plugs in.
Traditional forecasting uses static models (moving averages, seasonal indices). AI-native forecasting adapts in real time to demand signals, learns from outcomes, and explains its reasoning. That's what Tightly's Smart Replenishment engine does.