Machine Learning: Don't Let Weather Fluctuations Take Your Supply Chain by Storm

Weather can cause significant fluctuations in consumer demand, and because of the bullwhip effect, it can produce unnecessarily high fluctuations on the supply side as well. And these types of variations typically turn into costs. Prepare too extensively, and you'll end up breaching the capacity limitations at every level of your supply chain and increasing your fresh goods spoilage, but failing to prepare sufficiently leads to significant lost sales. What's more, lost sales do not only apply to products that go out of stock, especially during extreme weather conditions when customers are more likely to make their decision on which store to visit based on the availability of a key product, for example bottled water, snow shovels, quality barbecue meats or candles. So how can retailers optimally prepare for weather-related fluctuations?