Stocking the right amount of red lipstick

Big Questions Answered

Learn how CVS Pharmacy optimizes its inventory with machine learning, and how this ensures stores are prepared for customers who are attending nearby concerts, football games and more.

• Mario Rivera, SVP, chief supply chain and logistics officer, Pharmacy and Consumer Wellness, and Josh White, VP, inventory management and optimization, discuss the improvements we've made to our inventory process over the last two years.

• Optimizing inventory with machine learning helps the demand-planning team stay on top of trends and figure out how to best manage what goes in our stores — since there are 180 million possible product-store combinations.

• Customers are happier with the on-shelf availability of in-demand products, and the company benefits by reducing excess inventory and using the funds to invest in other areas of the business.

• Inventory planners at the company are using machine learning to augment their work. It allows them to spend more time on strategic aspects of their job like partnering with suppliers to ensure CVS Pharmacy has the right products in the supply chain and introducing new items to customers while removing outdated ones from shelves.