Introduction
A multinational Health Food Manufacturer used an Excel spreadsheet to identify upcoming stock cover issues, and plan production accordingly. In a high growth environment, this business faced stock cover issues on a daily basis. Management needed to quickly make quality decisions on which products to produce, and when, to meet required customer service levels.
The old solution, built in Excel, was slow to update, manually intensive, error prone and this meant it was only updated once or twice per week. As a result, the right decisions weren’t being made often enough and customer service levels suffered. Sales, Planning and Manufacturing divisions lacked trust and second guessed each other’s decisions.
SES was engaged to replace the spreadsheet and within a couple of weeks had the first working version of the new solution ready for testing. With consulting advice from SES, issues were identified and resolved in both data quality in the ERP system, and in business process.
The new solution is now providing managers with reliable information whenever they need it and allowing them to make better, more informed decisions.
Objectives
- Remove the risks associated with the Excel based system
- Increase efficiency and accuracy of the planning process
- Quickly identify stock cover issues
Issues
- Inventory decisions are made daily however stock cover projections are only updated weekly
- Incorrect decisions are being made due to spreadsheet errors and outdated data
- There is a lack of trust between business units
- Unacceptable stress levels due to excessive effort, yet still having many stock cover issues
Key Outcomes
- Customer Service levels have increased significantly
- Material write offs have reduced to almost nothing
- Trust has been re-established within the business
- Job satisfaction has improved
- Production plans and stock cover can be instantly validated against inventory policy
- Planning has a "What if" tool for testing production plan impact on stock cover
- Effort is focussed on informed decision making
- Time to update stock cover projection reduced from 5 hours down to 5 seconds
- Total planning process time reduced from 8 hours down to 30 minutes
- Projections were updated once per week, now they are updated instantly as required
Contact Us
Call us ( +61 1300 737 500) or send us a message to discuss your needs.
We will then organise a free, no-obligation Zoom meeting to look at and discuss your spreadsheet in more detail.