Dive Brief:

• Target, known for its lean logistics approach, is now facing too many empty shelves in its stores, say analysts and customers alike.

• The retailer itself has acknowledged the problem and its taking steps to remedy it.

• As the retailer has expanded into grocery and bumped up its e-commerce and omnichannel initiatives, the pressure on its supply chain has increased, experts say.

Dive Insight:

They say the first step in solving a problem is admitting you have one, and analysts told Minnesota public radio station MPR that Target CEO Brian Cornell is not only aware of the issue but is also taking significant steps to improve it.

Complaints of empty shelves are usually something heard about Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which has faced perennial complaints from customers and investors about its supply chain management. 

The pressure on retailers has only grown, especially for those like Wal-Mart and Target that are offering ship-from-store and curbside pickup services, which see both online orders and store customers clearing out shelves. And grocery is an especially complicated supply-chain space, with plenty of goods that go bad before they can be sold. 

Target already announced earlier this year that it was laying off workers and investing $1 billion in its supply chain and in technology.  

But its a new world in logistics. 

"The devil is in the details," K.K. Sinha, who chairs the supply chain operations department at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, told MPR. "You have to be able to forecast the demand and make sure all the systems are talking to one another and you have to work through the details. You have to sense and respond with respect to what's happening in every store in every different location."