Migros case study - at a glance
Migros is one of the world’s top 50 grocery retailers, with over 2000 stores and an annual revenue of $4 billion. Migros serves its customers in a variety of formats, ranging from 50,000 square-feet hypermarkets to 1,000 square-feet convenience stores.

Annual revenue - $4 Billion
Number of employees -27,000
Number of stores - 2,000
Number of SKUs - 30,000
Number of DCs - 11
With a well-deserved reputation for superior customer service and a wide selection of products, including high-quality fresh produce and fresh meals, Migros hypermarkets and convenience stores are the go-to grocery shopping destination for millions of customers every day. A retail success such as Migros needed a technology partner who could understand their needs and provide modern solutions in order to manage their day-to-day operations as well as help plan for the future.
Migros appointed invent.ai as their trusted partner to help manage their business-critical inventory operations. Following A/B testing in 200 stores, Migros rolled out the invent.ai's AI-powered solutions across their 11 warehouses and 2000 stores.
These solutions provide Demand Forecasting, Store Replenishment, and DC Replenishment.
It led to a 1.7% increase in availability and 11%reduction in inventory days.
Why did Migros choose invent.ai?
Migros is an innovative retailer with a history of efficient inventory management. As part of their DNA, they are constantly looking to improve their operations and customer service.
Following an in-depth assessment of 10 solution providers, they chose invent.ai's AI-driven forecasting and replenishment solutions to further reduce the amount of inventory on hold without compromising product availability across their large, complex SKUs.
Invent.ai’s advanced AI solutions track inventory in real time. This results in optimal inventory control in one powerful framework through custom-fit solutions.
A profit-optimizing solution to conflicting KPIs
A fundamental challenge in retail is managing the trade-off between conflicting KPIs, such as inventory turns and in-stock ratios, across a wide range of products and stores and multiple distribution channels. The core of invent.ai's solutions is the financial portfolio optimization approach which upgrades inventory decisions from only a judgment-driven, KPI-measured process to a comprehensive financial optimization-driven and measured process. A/B tests and ongoing analysis are used to help companies analyze their inventory and prioritize their resources. This change enables retailers to simultaneously deliver superior customer service while squeezing every last basis point of margin from the business.
The team at invent.ai tailored their solutions to meet Migros’ specific needs. After successful results in the A/B test, the systems rolled out for daily planning of Migros’ 2000 stores and 11 warehouse operations by taking the following information into account:
- Store capacities and visual minimum quantities
- Demand fluctuations with special days and promotions
- E-commerce order fulfillment from the stores
- Expiry dates for perishable items
- Seasonal products, such as fruits and vegetables
- Salvage costs of daily fresh products and fresh meals
- Promotion effects on competing or complementary products
- Supplier constraints
How Migros achieved speed to value, one of the key benefits of invent.ai’s inventory analysis methods
With simulations during a pre-go-live phase and successful A/B testing, invent.ai proved the benefits of their profit-optimal solutions: Change requests at no cost, forever.
For this project to succeed, Migros needed more than a set of black-box tools. They turned to invent.ai to tailor inventory optimization solutions to meet their specific, and evolving, multichannel retail needs.
"We were impressed at how quickly we started seeing the benefits of invent.ai systems. With a 1.3% lost sales reduction, inventory days reduced by more than 11% and stock availability increased by 1.7%, we saw a significant reduction in working capital in just five months.."
How Migros benefits from sophisticated AI-powered demand forecasting
Each day, the system detects outliers and lost sales and automatically selects the most effective AI-based forecasts from the product-store-day level forecast models. That means it can predict the probability of sales for each unit of each item at each store.
Store replenishment optimization
Taking all the business rules, strategic priorities and supply chain and store constraints, the system then calculates the optimal inventory levels and places orders that maximize profitability. This way vital financial resources are put to good use while replenishing the stock.
Advanced DC forecasting & replenishment
The solution generates store replenishment orders from multiple warehouses at the product-store-day level for over 30,000 SKUs at 2000 stores. The algorithm also calculates the e-commerce order fulfillment probability of each store to ensure availability with multi-channel orders. Total omni-channel demand at the product-store level is aggregated and supply recommendations are generated for optimal safety stock and maximum profit. The system also simultaneously plans warehouse replenishment from around 5000 suppliers.
The Migros team sets the strategy; invent.ai system takes care of the rest
Inventory data is of vital importance to retailers. Implementing invent.ai's store and warehouse replenishment solutions has saved the Migros inventory planning team a huge amount of time. They no longer need to calibrate the system parameters to deal with changing operational developments each day. The system itself determines the optimal re-order points and order quantities taking into account types of inventory, product profitability, strategic considerations, changing demand patterns, inventory write-offs and supply chain constraints.
Tailor-fit capabilities
The system makes over 20 million profit-optimized inventory decisions every day, without the need for constant parameter calibration. The invent.ai team delivers new tailor-fit capabilities every week and works with the Migros team to identify opportunities to improve system performance every day. This results not only in maintaining vital inventory levels across all channels but also increases the overall cash flow of the business. The system includes tools to recognize phantom inventory and manage returns effectively.
Achieving key results in record time
As a grocery retail giant, Migros is well known for pushing the boundaries of what is possible with advanced analytics and innovation. This financially optimized inventory management project is a great example of that. Crucially, store managers and central planners found the system easy to work with and the results transparent and accessible.
As a result, the system quickly gained credibility and there were minimal overrides of replenishment orders. Now, Migros is looking to extend its use of invent.ai's solutions into other key areas of management decision-making, such as assortment and pricing to maintain the competitive edge in the new unified commerce world of retail. The objective is to maintain optimum stock levels, customer service and increase profit margins.
With invent.ai's AI-powered inventory solutions, Migros has achieved an 11% reduction in inventory days, alongside a 1.7% increase in inventory availability, across its entire retail and supply footprint. Connect with an invent.ai retail expert to get similar results for your brand.