Atomic: Blog

Planners are the unsung heroes of consumer brands, holding together supply chains through spreadsheets and sheer force of will. But they deserve better tools. We built Atomic to be the inventory planning system we always wished we had.With the support of DVx Ventures and Madrona in our $3M seed round, we are scaling Atomic quickly to bring …

How much inventory should you carry? 8 weeks feels ‘safe’, right? Maybe 10?I did not come into demand/supply planning with formal training in supply chain formulas - I was a political science major in college. Most demand and supply planners who I’ve met are the same.So when making decisions like how much inventory to carry, most planners …

Controversial opinion alert: If monthly S&OP feels like torture - you might want to consider doing it weekly.What? Insanity! In fact, many Operations leaders we talk to say they want to reduce S&OP frequency because it's so painful: 1. It takes too long to gather and analyze data2. Running complex models is time-consuming3. Countless side conversations are …

How’s your relationship with your planning spreadsheet? If you’re like almost every planner we talk to, it’s probably a love-hate relationship. Most high growth brands plan supply and demand on a spreadsheet. Typically a 20+ tab monster maintained by one person. That sheet - and that person - often represent one single point of failure for tens …

You’re not alone. Many of the people we talk to are scarred from unending ERP implementations, and in our space, it’s common to feel skeptical about whether new software can truly capture all the nuances of your planning processes. In a call yesterday, someone described their planning process as a "large band-aid they are terrified to remove" …

“That’s the best we can do for forecast accuracy - and this is really overfitting it”“Ok then. I guess we’re all getting fired”It was late 2017, in less than a year we would be delivering thousands of Model 3s every week - with a very clear objective of no inventory build up or excess wait times for …

Food rots while apparel goes out of style  - a simple difference that drives totally different inventory planning needs. For planners who cut their teeth in apparel before joining food & beverage companies, the shift can be jarring. The Advantages: Relatively Stable Demand. People gotta eat! Aggregate F&B demand is more consistent with replenishment/subscription models rather than …

For most companies, inventory management starts simple - a few spreadsheets to track stock levels and do basic forecasting.  But as your business grows more complex, maintaining those worksheets becomes a full-time job (in addition to everything else your team is doing!) Here are 7 signs it may be time to graduate to a dedicated supply planning …

All physical goods companies have the same operating model: they procure goods, find customers, and sell finished goods to those customers. True, no company is the same. There are so many differences - in product, distribution, geography, and customer type. But at the very core, they all are in the business of selling stuff.

Revenue and inventory have a love-hate relationship. ‘You can’t sell what you don’t have’ is the reality of physical product companies.  So naturally Boards, Executives and sales teams push to maximize stocking levels. This approach works great during boom times. But as the economy slows and interest rates rise, companies feel the painful cost of excess inventory.

Atomic operates from the unit level of demand and supply in a powerful, simulation-based model of the business. The Atomic system incorporates three core modules - Demand, Supply, and Finance. Each module operates at the ‘atomic’ level - creating queues for demand (orders) and supply (inventory) at the most granular planning level - often by SKU and …