Retail Inventory Management System - OOD Coding Interview

Question

## Problem

Design a `RetailInventory` class that manages stock across multiple store locations.

```python
class RetailInventory:
    def stock(self, store_id: str, sku: str, qty: int) -> None: ...
    def sell(self, store_id: str, sku: str, qty: int) -> bool: ...    # False if insufficient stock
    def transfer(self, from_store: str, to_store: str, sku: str, qty: int) -> bool: ...
    def get_stock(self, store_id: str, sku: str) -> int: ...
    def low_stock_alert(self, threshold: int) -> list[tuple[str,str,int]]: ...
    # Returns list of (store_id, sku, current_qty) where qty < threshold
```

**Example:**
```
inv = RetailInventory()
inv.stock("NYC", "SKU-42", 100)
inv.sell("NYC", "SKU-42", 30)   -> True
inv.transfer("NYC", "LA", "SKU-42", 50)  -> True
inv.get_stock("NYC", "SKU-42")  -> 20
inv.low_stock_alert(25)  -> [("NYC", "SKU-42", 20)]
```

## Follow-ups
- How would you make `sell` and `transfer` thread-safe?
- Design the persistence layer: what database schema would you use?
- Extend `low_stock_alert` to trigger an automatic reorder from the nearest store with surplus.

Retail Inventory Management System - OOD Coding Interview

Question Details

Full Details

Topics

More from Bloomberg