Consumer Goods
Consumer Goods organizations are faced with a growing number of problems that make their supply chain needs unique. Many companies now have very complex manufacturing strategies and supply networks that are more global in nature and rely more on flexibility and postponement. They are under constant pressure to reduce costs while not sacrificing service levels, yet in many cases, these service levels are also under pressure to improve. All of these dynamics are happening in the face of very volatile and unstable demand conditions, thereby making the ability to plan and predict inventory needs difficult for even the best planning organization.
Clients in this space have to adjust their supply chain thinking to encompass
not only Demand Fulfillment activities, at lower costs than ever before,
but must now begin to leverage these capabilities to encompass the demand
generation side of the business. Tactics such as CPFR, trade and promotion
optimization, demand sensing, and re-invigorated sales and operations planning
processes are required to help drive results.
Plan4Demand helps our customers with key initiatives in areas such as:
- Managing and planning for demand in a heavily promoted category or market
- Postponement strategies
- Synchronizing demand with supply to improve customer service levels, increase velocity, and lower inventories
- Incorporating dependent demand and the management of contract manufacturing into the planning process to reduce lead times while still surviving on lean levels of finished good inventories
- Streamlining distribution networks to optimize the total cost to serve customers
- Optimizing inventory and safety stock policies to balance customer service demands and working capital needs
- Obtaining global visibility across operations to increase customer service responsiveness and support extended available to promise and capable to promise models over an extended supply chain
- Benchmarking and score-carding within the industry and among customers and suppliers in Consumer Goods industries
- Designing, deploying a sustainable sales and operations planning process that drives to one-number planning
