Patent ID: 7480623

Claim:
A computer-implemented system for determining time-phased product sales forecasts and projected replenishment shipments for a retail store supply chain using product sales history records generated by retail stores in the supply chain, the system comprising: a) a forecasting system that determines projected sales of a first plurality of products for a retail store in the supply chain using the product sales history records for said retail store, wherein said first plurality of products is a subset of a second plurality of products that is larger than said first plurality of products and said projected sales are determined in accordance with a first benchmark; b) a replenishment system that determines first projected replenishment shipments of products to said retail store from a first entity in the retail store supply chain using said projected sales determined by said forecasting system, wherein said first projected replenishment shipments are determined in accordance with said first benchmark; and c) wherein said first benchmark comprises determining (i) said projected sales for one year in the future in a first time period and (ii) said first projected replenishment shipments for one year in the future in a second time period, when said first plurality of products is 8,457 in number, said second plurality of products is 34,500 in number, the product sales history records are 720,000 in number, there is a net change for only said first plurality of products, and said projected sales and said first projected replenishment shipments are determined using a computer capable of executing, in either of said first time period and said second time period, no more than an equivalent number of instructions to what can be executed by a computer having (i) one X86 instruction set microprocessor rated at 866 MHz, (ii) 192 megabytes of transient memory and (iii) a hard drive having a disk speed of 7200 rpms, in either of said first time period and said second time period, wherein if said forecasting system and said replenishment system are caused to operate in accordance with said first benchmarks at least one of said first time period and second time period is less than 30 minutes.