Blue Ridge, a leader in supply chain planning and pricing solutions, announced today that Ed Rusch has joined the organization as chief marketing officer, reporting to CEO Jim Byrnes. Ed brings years of marketing and supply chain leadership experience to Blue Ridge with a strong track record of building cross-functional global teams, launching digital marketing strategy and fueling growth through customer-centric approaches.

“Ed is a dynamic leader uniquely qualified to develop our marketing strategy and help drive our growth, product and customer experience ambitions forward,” said Jim Byrnes, chief executive officer, Blue Ridge Global. “He will be an integral part of developing and communicating our vision, exploring the science of demand planning and price optimization that together create a more foreseeable future for our customers.”

Ed comes to Blue Ridge from Command Alkon, a leading supply chain technology platform for heavy construction, where he served as vice president of Global Marketing. Prior to that, he served as vice president of Corporate Marketing for Elemica, a leading digital supply chain and logistics network in manufacturing.

“The people of Blue Ridge possess an infectious passion for their customers and the business,” stated Ed. “I’m extremely thankful to be a part of this exceptional team and am eager to work alongside them to open, develop and nurture new markets for growth.”

Ed is focused on bringing to market new strategic technologies that address pervasive supply chain challenges while building resilience, including Supply Chain Planning 180, which Blue Ridge released in September. Supply Chain Planning 180 leverages new machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) enhanced features to unlock the science behind demand sensing capabilities—Demand Classification Enhancement, Intermittent Demand Forecasting and Intelligent Min/Max Replenishment. 

Blue Ridge Cloud-Native Supply Chain Planning predicts daily store demand, distribution center demand, receipts and on-hand inventory to create the optimal plan considering the unique dynamics of every item, location, channel and supplier.