In contemporary retail, the variety of products available (e.g. clothing, groceries, cosmetics, frozen goods) make it difficult to predict the demand, prevent stockouts, and find high-potential products. We suggest an agentic AI model that will be used to monitor the inventory, initiate purchase attempts to the appropriate suppliers, and scan for trending or high-margin products to incorporate. The system applies demand forecasting, supplier selection optimization, multi-agent negotiation and continuous learning. We apply a prototype to a setting in the store of a middle scale mart, test its performance on three conventional and artificial data tables, and compare the results to the base heuristics. Our findings indicate that there is a decrease in stockouts, a reduction of inventory holding costs, and an improvement in product mix turnover. We address constraints, scalability as well as improvement prospect.

We consider a discrete-time formulation for a class of high-dimensional stochastic joint replenishment problems. First, we approximate the problem by a continuous-time impulse control problem. Exploiting connections among the impulse control problem, backward stochastic differential equations (BSDEs) with jumps, and the stochastic target problem, we develop a novel, simulation-based computational method that relies on deep neural networks to solve the impulse control problem. Based on that solution, we propose an implementable inventory control policy for the original (discrete-time) stochastic joint replenishment problem, and test it against the best available benchmarks in a series of test problems. For the problems studied thus far, our method matches or beats the best benchmark we could find, and it is computationally feasible up to at least 50 dimensions -- that is, 50 stock-keeping units (SKUs).

This paper shows a comprehensive analysis of three algorithms (Time Series, Random Forest (RF) and Deep Reinforcement Learning) into three inventory models (the Lost Sales, Dual-Sourcing and Multi-Echelon Inventory Model). These methodologies are applied in the supermarket context. The main purpose is to analyse efficient methods for the data-driven. Their possibility, potential and current challenges are taken into consideration in this report. By comparing the results in each model, the effectiveness of each algorithm is evaluated based on several key performance indicators, including forecast accuracy, adaptability to market changes, and overall impact on inventory costs and customer satisfaction levels. The data visualization tools and statistical metrics are the indicators for the comparisons and show some obvious trends and patterns that can guide decision-making in inventory management. These tools enable managers to not only track the performance of different algorithms in real-time but also to drill down into specific data points to understand the underlying causes of inventory fluctuations. This level of detail is crucial for pinpointing inefficiencies and areas for improvement within the supply chain.

We consider the problem of sequentially conducting multiple experiments where each experiment corresponds to a hypothesis testing task. At each time point, the experimenter must make an irrevocable decision of whether to reject the null hypothesis (or equivalently claim a discovery) before the next experimental result arrives. The goal is to maximize the number of discoveries while maintaining a low error rate at all time points measured by local False Discovery Rate (FDR). We formulate the problem as an online knapsack problem with exogenous random budget replenishment. We start with general arrival distributions and show that a simple policy achieves a $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret. We complement the result by showing that such regret rate is in general not improvable. We then shift our focus to discrete arrival distributions. We find that many existing re-solving heuristics in the online resource allocation literature, albeit achieve bounded loss in canonical settings, may incur a $\Omega(\sqrt{T})$ or even a $\Omega(T)$ regret. With the observation that canonical policies tend to be too optimistic and over claim discoveries, we propose a novel policy that incorporates budget safety buffers. It turns out that a little more safety can greatly enhance efficiency -- small additional logarithmic buffers suffice to reduce the regret from $\Omega(\sqrt{T})$ or even $\Omega(T)$ to $O(\ln^2 T)$. From a practical perspective, we extend the policy to the scenario with continuous arrival distributions as well as time-dependent information structures. We conduct both synthetic experiments and empirical applications on a time series data from New York City taxi passengers to validate the performance of our proposed policies. Our results emphasize how effective policies should be designed in online resource allocation problems with exogenous budget replenishment.

We introduce a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach for solving management problems including inventory management, dynamic pricing, and recommendation. This DRL approach has the potential to lead to a large management model based on certain transformer neural network structures, resulting in an artificial general intelligence paradigm for various management tasks. Traditional methods have limitations for solving complex real-world problems, and we demonstrate how DRL can surpass existing heuristic approaches for solving management tasks. We aim to solve the problems in a unified framework, considering the interconnections between different tasks. Central to our methodology is the development of a foundational decision model coordinating decisions across the different domains through generative decision-making. Our experimental results affirm the effectiveness of our DRL-based framework in complex and dynamic business environments. This work opens new pathways for the application of DRL in management problems, highlighting its potential to revolutionize traditional business management.

In the digital transformation era, integrating digital technology into every aspect of banking operations improves process automation, cost efficiency, and service level improvement. Although logistics for Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cash is a crucial task that impacts operating costs and consumer satisfaction, there has been little effort to enhance it. Specifically, in Vietnam, with a market of more than 20,000 ATMs nationally, research and technological solutions that can resolve this issue remain scarce. In this paper, we generalized the vehicle routing problem for ATM cash replenishment, suggested a mathematical model, and then offered a tool to evaluate various situations. When being evaluated on the simulated dataset, our proposed model and method produced encouraging results with the benefits of cutting ATM cash operating costs.

The bandits with knapsack (BwK) framework models online decision-making problems in which an agent makes a sequence of decisions subject to resource consumption constraints. The traditional model assumes that each action consumes a non-negative amount of resources and the process ends when the initial budgets are fully depleted. We study a natural generalization of the BwK framework which allows non-monotonic resource utilization, i.e., resources can be replenished by a positive amount. We propose a best-of-both-worlds primal-dual template that can handle any online learning problem with replenishment for which a suitable primal regret minimizer exists. In particular, we provide the first positive results for the case of adversarial inputs by showing that our framework guarantees a constant competitive ratio $\alpha$ when $B=\Omega(T)$ or when the possible per-round replenishment is a positive constant. Moreover, under a stochastic input model, our algorithm yields an instance-independent $\tilde{O}(T^{1/2})$ regret bound which complements existing instance-dependent bounds for the same setting. Finally, we provide applications of our framework to some economic problems of practical relevance.

In retail (e.g., grocery stores, apparel shops, online retailers), inventory managers have to balance short-term risk (no items to sell) with long-term-risk (over ordering leading to product waste). This balancing task is made especially hard due to the lack of information about future customer purchases. In this paper, we study the problem of restocking a grocery store's inventory with perishable items over time, from a distributional point of view. The objective is to maximize sales while minimizing waste, with uncertainty about the actual consumption by costumers. This problem is of a high relevance today, given the growing demand for food and the impact of food waste on the environment, the economy, and purchasing power. We frame inventory restocking as a new reinforcement learning task that exhibits stochastic behavior conditioned on the agent's actions, making the environment partially observable. We make two main contributions. First, we introduce a new reinforcement learning environment, RetaiL, based on real grocery store data and expert knowledge. This environment is highly stochastic, and presents a unique challenge for reinforcement learning practitioners. We show that uncertainty about the future behavior of the environment is not handled well by classical supply chain algorithms, and that distributional approaches are a good way to account for the uncertainty. Second, we introduce GTDQN, a distributional reinforcement learning algorithm that learns a generalized Tukey Lambda distribution over the reward space. GTDQN provides a strong baseline for our environment. It outperforms other distributional reinforcement learning approaches in this partially observable setting, in both overall reward and reduction of generated waste.

Thanks to the rise of new technologies, the world we live in today is vastly different from the world we lived in, even just a few years ago. One of the most profound changes the internet has brought about is the rise of the internet of things (IoT). The IoT refers to the network of physical devices connected to the internet that can collect, store, share, and interpret data. With IoT in mind, one of the biggest trends in the tech world is the rise of Artificial Intelligence. The AI technology has been used in everything from computers to medical devices, and it will only become more prevalent in our everyday lives.

In today's competitive markets, B2B companies must constantly look for ways to go above and beyond what their peers have to offer. Many are using AI in B2B e-commerce to leap ahead. In fact, AI is fast becoming critical for business survival. Ritu Jyoti, program vice president, artificial intelligence at IDC, says, "companies will adopt AI -- not just because they can, but because they must." According to IDC, global spending on AI is predicted to double within the next four years, growing from $50.1 billion in 2020 to a forecasted $110 billion in 2024.