Amazon built two radically different approaches to predicting the future — a proprietary supply chain optimization pipeline (SCOT) and an open-source time series foundation model (Chronos). This post compares their architectures, trade-offs, and when each philosophy applies.
A decision framework for choosing between Amazon's Chronos-2 foundation model and custom XGBoost many-models pipelines for demand forecasting. Based on real patterns from SKU-level supply chain work.