FROZEN FOODS MANUFACTURER

The Challenge:

MANUAL PROCESSES LED TO A LACK OF FORECAST ACCURACY

The challenge for this Food & Beverage Manufacturing company stemmed from a manual forecasting process. This company had no method of measuring forecast accuracy, especially in regards to seasonality and new products. They recognized they needed a more robust process and technology to accurately forecast their inventory to improve service levels and reduce stockouts. In addition to the process and technology challenges, industry changes were occurring that added complexity to the business. Therefore, they saw this timing as the perfect opportunity to not only improve their forecast accuracy with new technology, but also implement a formal Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) methodology to improve business processes, and redefine internal roles and responsibilities. 

The Solution:

FORMAL S&OP METHODOLOGY SUPPORTED BY A WORLD CLASS TECHNOLOGY SOLUTION

QAD and Scott Sheldon, LLC partnered to create a three-phased approach to solve this Food & Beverage Manufacturing company’s challenges. The first two phases ran in parallel with each other; phase one consisted of implementing a formal S&OP methodology while phase two focused on implementing QAD DSCP. The integration of S&OP and QAD DSCP software delivered the capabilities enabling the company to seamlessly operate and communicate between departments.

QAD Demand Planning enabled this organization to become a more effective enterprise by supporting collaborative sales, budgets, supply chain planning and forecasting.

Additionally, QAD Demand Planning allowed all stakeholders to access a suite of tools that enabled effective collaboration and simplified analysis across the extended enterprise. Furthermore, memory resident planning and simulation features enabled the organization to rapidly evaluate planned promotions or new product introductions, and promote timely responses to demand fluctuations.

Once demand planning was fully functional, phase three of the project was initiated. This phase utilized QAD Production Planning to optimize production capacities, resources and inventories.

By implementing S&OP and QAD DSCP in phases, this organization was able to quickly complete the project that encompassed both internal and external manufacturing locations and multiple finished good warehouses in roughly nine months. The phased approach ensured that the company was getting value out of the solution before moving onto the next phase as well as allowing time for user adoption.

The Benefits:

IMPROVED FORECAST ACCURACY AND REDUCTION IN EXCESS INVENTORY

Key benefits of the implementation included:

• Improved data accuracy and quality by replacing a manual Excel spreadsheet process
• Addition of more robust features including various forecast methods, financial modeling, statistical forecasting models, etc.
• Greater visibility of forecast and collaboration
• 17% improvement in forecast accuracy with additional improvements on the horizon
• Improvement in service levels
• Reduction in inventory near $500K
• Reduction in excess and obsolete inventory
• Reduction in inventory write-offs

By implementing S&OP and QAD DSCP in phases, this organization was able to quickly complete the project that encompassed both internal and external manufacturing locations and multiple finished good warehouses in roughly nine months.

*QAD Digital Supply Chain Planning (DSCP)* was formerly known as QAD DynaSys