There is inherent tension between meeting customer service expectation and minimizing inventory investment. ISE Emeritus Faculty Tom Willemain, also co-founder and Senior VP for Research at Smart Software, describes in his recent article in American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) magazine, the use of data to better characterize customer demand, and optimize the inventory management. Prof. Willemain describes three related tasks: measuring current performance, identifying the improvements that need to be made, and determining how to move from the current situation to something better. The article "Powering Your SKU with Data" may be found in APICS Magazine (July/August Issue).