Duncan was joined by Simon Roberts, CEO of Sainsbury’s, to discuss how Blue Yonder’s cognitive solution is an important part of “building our strength and capabilities we’ll need for the future.”
Sainsbury’s started with an ambitious goal: to make good food joyful, accessible, and affordable. To accomplish this, the team invested in technology built to reduce waste, improve accuracy and availability, and simplify operations for team members.
As Simon said, “Not because using new tech was a goal, but because of the powerful outcomes we wanted to drive. Better availability, lower waste, simpler processes for colleagues, better partnering with suppliers, and, most importantly, to show up brilliantly for our customers every day.”
The results showed that Simon and his team made the right call. They saw:
- Improved availability while reducing stock through more accurate forecasting and replenishment decisions.
- Reduced waste at scale through accurate ordering and allocation that drove 150,000 fewer disposals and 800,000 fewer markdowns during their peak in 2025.
- A more resilient supply chain by reducing operational incidents and contingency reliance and embedded simulation to de-risk key trading events like Christmas.
- A single forecasting and replenishment platform across SKUs on one end-to-end platform.
- Digitization of category management to improve decision quality, productivity, and alignment between commercial and supply chain execution.
If these are the metrics we can all expect in the future of supply chain, we can’t wait.
