New agentic operating capabilities underpin RELEX Open to connect specialized AI, business knowledge, and agents across supply chain planning, merchandising, and operations

ATLANTA, Nov. 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — RELEX Solutions today unveiled new agentic operating capabilities underpinning the RELEX Open platform for connecting systems, extending applications, and orchestrating AI-driven workflows across the value chain. Building on specialized AI expertise for retail, wholesale, and manufacturing, the new capabilities advance the RELEX vision for connected decision-making by letting agents and AI across supply chain planning, merchandising, and operations account for priorities and constraints elsewhere in the business.

“Giving every function its own AI agent does not create a better-run business if their decisions don’t work in sync,” said Mikko Kärkkäinen, Group CEO and Co-founder, RELEX Solutions. “Our experience supporting hundreds of retailers, wholesalers, and manufacturers has given us the domain expertise and AI foundation to help companies move toward more adaptive, coordinated operations.”

From planning to orchestration: RELEX’s vision for AI-driven decision-making

The RELEX vision is to move beyond optimizing individual planning decisions toward an open, connected model where AI can coordinate decisions across the business, work across RELEX and external systems, and build on accumulated domain knowledge over time.

RELEX Open provides the foundation for that shift. It opens RELEX capabilities to external systems, agents, partners, and customer teams through APIs, MCP, plugins, and other open standards, letting organizations connect existing technology and build new capabilities without replacing what already works. The agentic capabilities build on that foundation with the business knowledge and orchestration agents need to understand how decisions relate, determine which capabilities to use, and coordinate actions across the business.

Supporting that vision, RELEX Open now comprises three connected capabilities allowing companies to deploy proven AI, extend it to their needs, and orchestrate decisions across functions:

• Built to deploy: RELEX brings more than 20 years of specialized AI and proven planning capabilities across forecasting, replenishment, merchandising, pricing, and operations. Built-in agents and AI capabilities work on a unified operational data model, giving customers a production-ready foundation without building the planning intelligence themselves.
• Built to extend: Customers and partners will be able to connect external data and systems through APIs and MCP and extend RELEX to address new business problems. New applications, logic and UI plugins, agents, and skills can be developed on production-grade RELEX foundations, letting organizations combine their own expertise with RELEX specialized AI and domain capabilities.
• Built to orchestrate: Agents across functions can share context and coordinate recommendations, so decisions in one function account for their impact elsewhere. The orchestration layer gives teams visibility across merchandising, supply chain, operations, and finance, identifies priority actions when performance changes, and traces the decisions behind each recommendation.

Underpinning these capabilities is a shared knowledge graph that maps how processes, systems, teams, decisions, and KPIs relate. Built on RELEX domain expertise, the knowledge graph also captures the institutional knowledge employees often carry implicitly, giving agents the context to understand how decisions affect business outcomes and providing a common foundation for reasoning across functions.

Governance is built into RELEX Open. RELEX applies a responsible-by-design approach to AI, with security, transparency, explainability, and human oversight helping organizations control how agents access information, make recommendations, and act.

“As retailers and manufacturers adopt more AI capabilities, the next challenge is making sure those systems can work together to support better business decisions,” said Steve Rowen, Managing Partner, RSR Research. “That requires a deep understanding of how the business operates, how decisions affect one another, and where human judgment is needed. RELEX’s approach of building orchestration on established planning capabilities and domain knowledge is a good direction as the industry moves toward more coordinated, AI-driven operations.”

From roadmap to production: solving customer-specific challenges

RELEX is already working with customers to extend the platform beyond standard applications and address business-specific challenges, using a faster, more iterative approach to delivering new capabilities.

Sprouts Farmers Market is working with RELEX to co-develop and refine its store replenishment capabilities through feedback from store teams. The collaboration aims to simplify workflows, improve visibility into replenishment decisions, and build trust in the technology used every day.

“What has been different about working with RELEX is the opportunity for our store teams to help shape the solution from the beginning,” said Steve Huesing, VP Inventory Management, Sprouts Farmers Market. “We’re building around how our stores specifically operate, testing capabilities in real environments, and making improvements based on feedback from the people using them every day. That collaborative approach is helping us co-develop a solution that our teams can understand, trust, and use with confidence.”

A large European food retailer, already using RELEX planning capabilities at scale, is working with RELEX to build new capabilities on RELEX Open. RELEX forward-deployed engineers are collaborating with the retailer across several use cases, including a supplier planning challenge with constraints specific to its operating model. The first capability was developed within days and ready in production within weeks.

The same faster, iterative approach extends to Store Operations. One U.S. grocer moved its fresh ordering and inventory capabilities onto RELEX, going live in stores within one quarter. In Europe, a major convenience retailer piloted RELEX Dynamic Markdown across multiple store formats, increasing adoption of AI-generated markdown recommendations while reducing manual overrides and waste.

Together, these examples demonstrate how RELEX Open can shorten the path from a customer-specific operational need to deployed software, while letting teams refine capabilities around how their businesses operate.

Join the RELEX webinar entitled “Making AI decisions work together” on February 10, 2027. Register here.

About RELEX Solutions
RELEX Solutions provides a decision orchestration platform that coordinates decisions across retail and manufacturing operations, connecting strategic planning with operational execution.

Drawing on 700+ customer deployments and deep industry expertise, RELEX helps organizations make better decisions across demand, inventory, merchandising, pricing, and supply chain operations. With RELEX, companies can deploy proven AI, build their own applications and agents, and orchestrate decisions across functions and systems.

Leading brands like ADUSA, Camco, Carhartt, COSMOS Pharmaceutical Corporation, Circle K, Dollar Tree and Family Dollar, M&S Food, PetSmart, Rituals, The Body Shop, The Home Depot, Sun Tire & Auto Service, and Vita Coco use RELEX to run and continuously evolve their operations. Learn more at: relexsolutions.com/customers

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SOURCE RELEX Solutions