1H 2026 Release
What’s new in Cognitive Solutions for Planning
Retail Planning
From strategy to execution, 2026.3 brings AI-powered decision-making across financial, assortment, space, inventory and labor planning.
Space Planning Solution
This release combines AI-assisted planogram management, collaboration, execution and compliance. AI-assisted design and virtual workspaces help planners create and maintain planograms faster, while mobile execution and compliance workflows keep stores consistent on the shelf. Placement intelligence supports store-specific planograms that balance local merchandising goals with inventory requirements.
- Accelerate planogram creation and maintenanceAI-assisted design and editing reduce the effort of building and maintaining planograms. Virtual workspaces let planners work on multiple planograms at once, with collaboration notifications that link directly to the planograms needing attention.
- Increase shelf availability and execution accuracy Mobile Planogram Execution and Planogram Compliance workflows guide stores through implementation, validation and discrepancy resolution. The result is stronger adoption and more consistent shelf execution.
- Profit from localized merchandising decisions Store-specific planograms balance local merchandising goals with inventory requirements. Placement intelligence factors in inventory rules, case multiples, days of supply and product anchoring during optimization.
Allocation and Replenishment
This release advances agentic inventory planning with AI-powered explainability, automation and inventory intelligence. AI agents help planners understand forecasts faster and take on routine parameter updates, while an audit trail for overrides makes every manual forecast change traceable. When on-hand records are missing or unreliable, the Inventory Reconstruction Service rebuilds store inventory by lot and expiry date, so planners can act on data they trust.
- Improve planner confidence and reduce manual administrative tasks AI agents help planners understand forecasts faster and spend less time maintaining parameters. The Forecasting Agent walks through each forecast in detail, and the Inventory Ops Agent can now update forecasts, availability and waste parameters, and inventory targets.
- Increase forecast governance An audit trail for forecast overrides gives full visibility into how planners adjust system-generated forecasts, making every manual change traceable.
- Restore inventory data confidence When on-hand records are missing or unreliable, the Inventory Reconstruction Service rebuilds the latest store inventory by lot and expiry date, so planners can trust the data they’re working with.
Merchandise Financial Planning
Greater agility and configuration flexibility, from faster scenario creation to more precise time-scoping. An AI agent lets planners build and adjust financial scenarios conversationally, so they can respond faster to changing conditions.
- Accelerate scenario planning and decision-making An AI agent lets planners create and update financial planning scenarios conversationally, so they can model what-ifs faster and respond quickly to changing conditions.
- Work the grid more efficiently Make complex financial plans easier to navigate and analyze with configurable colors group that highlight critical metrics across plans and views. Absolute and relative time filtering lets planners set their planning scope with fixed or dynamic time periods.
Assortment Planning
Financial and thematic guardrails, set by channel or store cluster before style-color decisions, help protect margins and prevent overbuying. In-season tracking and sharper store clustering let planners catch performance issues early and keep assortments aligned with real customer and store behavior.
- Set the strategy before the styles Set financial and thematic guardrails before style-color decisions to protect margins and prevent overbuying. Advanced assortment strategy builds macro plans by channel or store cluster, with nested product attributes reconciled back to top-line targets.
- In-season alignment to real customer and store behavior Plan-to-actual tracking with receipt and ranging adjustments helps planners catch and correct performance issues as they emerge. Enhanced store clustering, with bulk runs, outlier detection, radar views and cluster comparison, keeps assortments grounded in how stores perform.
Advanced Labor Forecasting
This release extends labor planning with longer-range forecasting and weather-aware demand insights helping teams make staffing, budgeting and hiring decisions with greater accuracy and confidence.
- Increase labor planning accuracy and visibility Weekly labor forecasts now extend up to 52 weeks and factor in weather data, giving teams the longer-range view and demand insight they need for more informed staffing, budgeting and hiring decisions.
Manufacturing Planning
2026.3 release strengthens manufacturing planning from forecast to factory floor. Validated forecasting models and early conflict detection make plans more reliable, while dynamic constraints and AI planning agents speed up business planning. Disruption modeling and real-time order synchronization keep production schedules aligned with demand.
Demand and Supply Planning This release delivers more reliable plans, faster, with stronger governance over forecasting models and proactive conflict resolution across scenarios.
- Increase forecast stability Strengthen confidence in automated planning by ensuring only validated, high-performing forecasting models are advanced into production. Data science workflows let planners and data scientists evaluate model performance in out-of-sample testing and automate model selection, so only validated, high-performing forecasting models reach production.
- Reduce planning rework across scenarios Improve planner productivity by surfacing conflicts earlier, so teams can identify and resolve inconsistencies before they affect planning decisions. Scenario conflict management flags input data conflicts across parent, child and peer scenarios, so teams can resolve inconsistencies before they affect planning decisions.
Reduce planning rework across scenarios Improve planner productivity by surfacing conflicts earlier, so teams can identify and resolve inconsistencies before they affect planning decisions. Scenario conflict management flags input data conflicts across parent, child and peer scenarios, so teams can resolve inconsistencies before they affect planning decisions.
Integrated Business Planning
- Faster responses to supply constraints, with AI agents that move planners from analysis to action. Dynamic constraints let planners model real-world supply limits directly, without IT support or full plan regeneration. AI planning agents then help them analyze plans, build scenarios and act on insights faster.
- Accelerate response to supply constraints Reduce planning cycle times by modeling and managing constraints directly within Integrated Business Planning, without relying on IT support or full plan regeneration. Planners can create, edit and manage supply constraints directly with automatic synchronization to solvers. They can respond to constraints faster, without IT support or full plan regeneration.
- Scale planning productivity with AI agents AI planning agents help planners move from analysis to action faster, supporting plan analysis, scenario creation, optimization, insights and automated summaries of planning changes.
Scale planning productivity with AI agents AI planning agents help planners move from analysis to action faster, supporting plan analysis, scenario creation, optimization, insights and automated summaries of planning changes.
Production Planning and Scheduling
- This release advances synchronized manufacturing planning with disruption modeling and real-time, order-driven scheduling. Planners and schedulers can simulate disruptions and evaluate alternatives before committing changes to the production line. Real-time order synchronization with Demand and Supply Planning makes new orders available immediately, shortening replan time.Respond faster to production disruptions Scenario planning in the schedule board lets planners and schedulers simulate disruptions and assess schedule and resource impacts before changes reach the production line.Accelerate execution of demand-driven production plans Real-time order synchronization with Demand and Supply Planning makes new orders immediately available for batch-based updates, shortening the time to replan.
- Respond faster to production disruptions Scenario planning in the schedule board lets planners and schedulers simulate disruptions and assess schedule and resource impacts before changes reach the production line.
- Accelerate execution of demand-driven production plans Real-time order synchronization with Demand and Supply Planning makes new orders immediately available for batch-based updates, shortening the time to replan.
Additional Updates
Looking for more details on updates to the solutions you’ve licensed? Visit the Blue Yonder Customer Portal. You’ll find the latest information, including detailed documentation, within the Documentation section for each solution.
If you have any questions, please contact your sales representative.
