Lessons from VN2, the first global inventory-planning competition

Nicolas Vandeput summarizes the VN2 competition, which ran from September 29 to November 10, 2025. More than 180 participants made six weekly ordering decisions across 599 product-store combinations while balancing shortage and holding costs.

VN2 is useful because it evaluates forecasts through inventory decisions and cost consequences rather than accuracy alone. Operational adoption still requires tests against real lead times, order constraints, service policies and manual overrides.