Episode

From kibble to clicks: Chewy's path to the Edelman Award competition

Podcast
Resoundingly Human
Published
Mar 28, 2026
Duration seconds
1086
Processing state
not_requested
Canonical source
https://informs.libsyn.com/from-kibble-to-clicks-chewys-path-to-the-edelman-award-competition
Audio
https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/informs/riverside_chewy_edit_1_ashley_ks_studio.mp3?dest-id=732069
JSON
/v1/public/podcasts/resoundingly-human-235651/episodes/from-kibble-to-clicks-chewy-s-path-to-the-edelman-award-competition
Markdown
/podcast/resoundingly-human-235651/from-kibble-to-clicks-chewy-s-path-to-the-edelman-award-competition.md

Actions

  • POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/resoundingly-human-235651/episodes/from-kibble-to-clicks-chewy-s-path-to-the-edelman-award-competition/transcription-requests
    Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
  • GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/resoundingly-human-235651/from-kibble-to-clicks-chewy-s-path-to-the-edelman-award-competition.md
    Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

Summary

Each year, organizations from around the world compete in the INFORMS Franz Edelman Award competition, demonstrating how advanced analytics and O.R. are solving real problems at massive scale. In this episode, members of the team from Chewy , the largest online pet retailer and pharmacy in the United States, share how they tackled a challenge that sounds simple on the surface but becomes incredibly complex at scale: replenishment. Using a science-driven suite of models, supported by a custom engineering platform and continuous analytics monitoring, the team transformed how Chewy manages purchase orders, safety stock, and inventory placement – all while accounting for unreliable data, supply uncertainty, and vendor constraints. The result? Improved inventory placement, fewer split shipments, shorter shipping distances, and meaningful financial impact in a thin-margin industry.