Retail supply chains are facing immense pressure today
Retail supply chains are under unprecedented strain as rising complexity, fragmented systems and siloed operations continue to erode margins and weaken customer satisfaction. Shifts in consumer expectations toward faster fulfillment, personalized experiences and seamless omnichannel journeys are forcing retailers to rethink how they plan, execute and optimize their supply chains. In response to these mounting challenges, Blue Yonder has unveiled a broad set of new AI-driven innovations across its end-to-end planning and execution portfolio, designed to help retailers operate with greater agility, enhance customer experiences and drive sustainable, profitable growth.
“Increasing customer demands for speed, personalization and convenience are driving the need for connected, data-driven supply chain solutions that deliver speed and precision while protecting a company’s bottom line,” said Duncan Angove, CEO of Blue Yonder. “By leveraging AI-driven capabilities, unified decisioning and an intelligent multi-enterprise network, our latest innovations help retailers adapt to market volatility, optimize resources and deliver delightful customer experiences at scale.”
These enhancements build on Blue Yonder’s launch of AI-powered, platform-driven Cognitive Solutions in mid-2025 and reflect the company’s continued focus on embedding intelligence across every layer of retail supply chain planning and execution.
Innovations in unified supply chain planning
Planning agents that enhance speed and flexibility
Blue Yonder is redefining retail planning through machine learning and AI-driven capabilities that improve forecast accuracy, optimize inventory strategies and dynamically align plans with real-world market conditions. Enhanced AI agents for Merchandise Financial Planning and Assortment Planning enable retailers to identify profit risks more quickly, recommend corrective actions and build optimized assortments informed by real-time trend analysis.
To support planners on the move, Blue Yonder has also introduced a new mobile companion app for Allocation and Replenishment. The app allows planners to review daily store orders, adjust allocations and confirm quantities in real time, improving responsiveness and reducing manual effort. As a result, planning teams can work more efficiently, reduce the risk of human error and devote more time to higher-value strategic initiatives.
The upgraded Inventory Ops Agent further empowers forecasters, allocators and re-buyers to assess whether inventory strategies are meeting business objectives and to explore AI-generated recommendations for improvement. By enabling natural language updates to multi-sourcing configurations, the agent simplifies complex planning tasks while increasing accuracy and speed.
Similarly, the enhanced Shelf Ops Agent allows micro-space planners to automate complex activities such as planogram edits and product substitutions at scale using natural language prompts. This not only improves productivity but also provides deeper visibility into performance drivers, supporting more informed decision-making.
Real-time order and returns orchestration
Blue Yonder is also advancing order management and returns through AI-powered orchestration that delivers real-time inventory visibility, precise fulfillment decisions and optimized returns handling across every omnichannel touchpoint.
Enhancements to the sourcing simulator and rebalancer now support order-driven demand planning across fulfillment nodes, allowing retailers to proactively rebalance orders across locations. This leads to improved order placement, higher fill rates and better utilization of inventory.
The Smart Disposition engine has been expanded with new AI models that predict resale value across locations and intelligently route returned inventory to the most profitable destination. This enables retailers to recover margin more effectively from returns, which remain a significant cost center for the industry.
Order Management has also been enhanced with native AI agents, including a new fulfillment agent that provides real-time visibility and automated recommendations to resolve sourcing and fulfillment issues proactively. A customer service agent equips frontline teams to handle inquiries, resolve order issues and deliver consistent, high-quality customer experiences.
During the 2025 Thanksgiving weekend, Blue Yonder demonstrated the scalability of these capabilities by surfacing inventory availability to customers in as little as 10–12 milliseconds and generating estimated delivery dates for more than 1.2 billion SKUs. These innovations help retailers optimize margins from click to delivery to return, while elevating the overall customer experience.
Connected merchandising for store-specific execution
Blue Yonder’s AI-based merchandising innovations enable retailers to tailor assortments and shelf plans to the unique needs of each store. Through Micro Space Planning, retailers can create assortment-driven shelf and display plans that maximize product impact at the local level.
Using its built-in ML engine, Blue Yonder generates localized, store-level planograms based on rough-cut assortment data and changing market demand, eliminating the need for rigid templates and manual rules. A new mobile app supports faster and more accurate planogram execution by delivering instructions directly to store associates’ devices.
The app also supports planogram compliance by allowing associates to capture images of completed displays and share them with planners in real time. This feedback loop helps management quickly identify variances and incorporate insights into future store-specific planning.
Innovations in supply chain execution
Smarter warehouse operations
Blue Yonder’s Warehouse Management Solution now helps soft-lines, grocery and general merchandise retailers manage growing complexity through pull-based streaming that improves agility, maximizes capacity utilization and ensures continuous operations. The enhanced Warehouse Ops Agent delivers explainable insights and pre-shift reviews that dynamically optimize labor, resources and slotting plans to maximize throughput.
When combined with Blue Yonder’s 3D load-building and transportation optimization capabilities, retailers gain a powerful advantage. In the first ten months of 2025 alone, Blue Yonder optimized more than 23 million human tasks in warehouses.
Intelligent logistics at scale
Advancements in warehouse and transportation management also enable retailers to streamline workflows, automate routine tasks and improve collaboration across the supply chain. The enhanced Logistics Ops Agent features a modern, persona-based user experience and proactively identifies issues such as unrouteable loads, while recommending solutions like backhaul opportunities to reduce costs and accelerate delivery.
Industry validation and ecosystem strength
“By embedding AI across its end-to-end solutions, Blue Yonder enables retailers to unlock greater value and agility across their operations,” said Jordan Speer, Research Director at IDC. He noted that by allowing AI to uncover constraints, disruptions and inventory inaccuracies, Blue Yonder helps retailers make faster, more optimal decisions that reduce waste, control costs and improve customer service.
These innovations further strengthen Blue Yonder’s retail ecosystem, including the Blue Yonder Network, which connects retailers to more than 172,000 global trading partners, and the Blue Yonder Platform, which integrates planning and execution into a responsive, data-driven supply chain.
Showcasing innovation at NRF 2026
Blue Yonder will showcase its latest capabilities at NRF 2026: Retail’s Big Show, taking place January 11–13, 2026, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. In addition to live demonstrations at booth #4239, the company will host thought leadership sessions, customer discussions and exclusive networking events, highlighting how AI-powered, unified supply chain solutions are reshaping the future of retail.