Swapnil Pillai was a Business Analyst intern at NCGrowth in Summer 2018. He worked with Lindley Mills in designing inventory management system to help track important key performance indicators related to inventory ordering and minimize the overall cost of operations. After his masters in Operations Research from North Carolina State University, he joined Kroger’s analytics department as a Senior Data Scientist. A major problem faced by the retail industry is identifying how to bring products to customers at minimum cost. With growing competition, there is a huge focus on improving margins by minimizing operational cost and enhancing the customer experience by having products in-stock. Swapnil works with the Supply Chain team to identify areas of inefficiencies related to inventory management, store operations and store planogram design. He builds scalable solutions, ultimately optimizing the way Kroger functions. These solutions benefit customers by creating more in store product variety, attractive prices, reduction in food waste, etc. Swapnil states his ‘time at NCGrowth helped him develop the required skillsets and gave necessary exposure to the operational problems faced by the manufacturing industry.”