Case Study: WHSmith reduces spoilage and boosts availability with RELEX Solutions

WHSmith Optimizing Food-to-go and Weekday Profiles

WHSmith, a long-established UK retailer with a growing international business and a large fresh food-to-go range, needed a fast, reliable forecasting and replenishment solution for chilled products across its 350 UK stores. With a central replenishment team, the retailer faced challenges from split daily deliveries, volatile weekday demand (including promotions and holiday traffic) and high spoilage risk, so it sought a system that could be implemented quickly and reduce waste while improving availability.

RELEX was deployed rapidly (specification in Dec 2016, rollout to 350 stores by mid‑April 2017) to provide day-level forecasting, optimized weekday profiles and split-delivery planning; it even incorporated machine‑learning forecasts using airport passenger data to improve accuracy. The result was a significant reduction in spoilage in the 12 weeks after go‑live, higher product availability, easier safety‑stock tuning through configurable rules, and more time for the replenishment team to focus on planning and exceptions.

WHSmith

Jag Banwait

Merchandise Controller