Coles Group has partnered with RELEX Solutions to optimise its end-to-end supply chain planning for fresh produce and long-term inventory planning categories.
The RELEX solution will service Coles’ 850 supermarkets nationally and its seven fresh produce distribution centres, driving better customer service, reduced food waste, and improved supplier collaboration.
It will optimise Coles’ replenishment for fresh produce, utilising AI and high scale computation power. The solution also automates replenishment processes, giving planners time to focus on more critical and strategic tasks.
Coles Executive General Manager Central Operations and Transformation Kevin Gunn said Coles started the journey of centralising its replenishment model more than 10 years ago.
“Using the RELEX solution to centralise the control of the replenishment model allows Coles to provide increased efficiency in one of our most complex supply chains and improve the customer experience through more targeted ranges, improved availability, fresher products, and simpler processes for our team members and our suppliers.
“The centralised ordering of fresh produce will also help to reduce waste on our existing range and minimise waste on new ranges, which is important to us as Coles aims to become Australia’s most sustainable supermarket.”
Coles CIO Roger Sniezek said that Coles had selected RELEX as its next-generation replenishment technology to deliver benefits across the Coles Group.
“RELEX is a modern, automated, cloud-based replenishment solution provider to a number of leading grocers across Europe and the US. It represents a best-in-class technology solution that will deliver another major component of our technology-led strategy,” he said.
“The initiative forms part of Coles’ Easy Ordering program, which is a critical project in delivering on our Smarter Selling strategy.
“The new replenishment platform will integrate with Coles’ existing in-house advanced analytics smarter forecasting solution, which has already been rolled out to other non-fresh categories. This will enable an improved customer offer by not only taking into account past purchases, but also factoring weather and local community events into the forecasting algorithms.”