How J.D. Irving is Optimising Inventory Management with Aera

Amid fluctuating demand, rising input costs and ongoing supply chain risks, companies face growing pressure to keep inventory lean while staying responsive.

Aera Technology is stepping into this space with AI-powered decision intelligence, helping supply chain leaders make faster, more accurate calls on inventory — delivering up to 20% improvement in performance.

Among those benefitting from Aera's expertise is J.D. Irving, whose modern-day operations across the US and Canada span agriculture, forestry, shipbuilding and transportation. 

J.D. Irving accelerates business 'into the future'

Aera Technology's platform enables companies to continuously monitor and respond to supply and demand changes across the chain. By applying real-time analytics to fluctuating customer patterns, manufacturing shifts and warehousing constraints, firms can avoid the financial drain of overstocking or running short.

Georges Tetegan, Corporate Vice President of Business Transformation at J.D. Irving, explains that even the most robust plans are prone to disruption.

"Even with the best planning, you can have changes in manufacturing, warehousing capacity or customer order patterns that require continually rebalancing inventory," he says. "This demands time and constant attention."

Using Aera's tools, companies like J.D. Irving receive proactive alerts and recommendations, resulting in quicker rebalancing of inventory, avoidance of obsolescence and lower overall costs.

Georges adds: "Using Aera and its decision intelligence capabilities, we can predict issues ahead of time and receive informed recommendations in real-time to optimise inventory management and provide critical oxygen to our teams on the front lines. This enables us to accelerate our business into the future."

With inventory carrying costs accounting for 20% to 30% of total value, these real-time capabilities offer immediate financial impact.

How Aera improves inventory agility

Aera runs on Aera Decision Cloud and makes use of modular tools known as Aera Skills.

These 'skills' are composable, scalable and designed to target specific operational issues, all with the aim of unlocking value through better decision-making.

• Control Tower Skill: Provides a centralised view of inventory positions and movements, allowing for faster and clearer decision-making.
• Demand Forecasting Skill: Pulls from historical and external data sets to generate accurate stock forecasts that align with upcoming needs.
• Demand Sensing Skill: Uses live inputs such as sales data and even weather patterns to adapt forecasts to short-term shifts.
• Dynamic Safety Stock Skill: Recalibrates buffer stock based on shifting supply and demand, ensuring safety margins are both efficient and sufficient.
• Inventory Rebalancing Skill: Reallocates stock intelligently across the network, directly addressing one of the biggest causes of working capital inefficiencies.
• Aging Inventory Management Skill: Identifies products at risk of spoilage or markdowns, triggering redistribution actions to reduce write-offs.

Each skill is targeted at eliminating inefficiencies and strengthening the operational backbone of supply chain teams.

Turning decision intelligence into working capital

Fred Laluyaux, CEO at Aera Technology, says inventory optimisation is one of many areas where decision intelligence is transforming operations.

"Inventory optimisation is just one critical area where Aera is helping companies improve supply chain performance," says Fred.

"From the start, we designed Aera as an always-on decision intelligence agent to continually accelerate and optimise enterprise decision-making at scale and unlock new value. Today, decision intelligence is a must-have and Aera is at the forefront, fuelling amazing innovation and measurable outcomes for progressive leaders."

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