Food and Beverage
There are a number of critical supply chain issues that food and beverage companies face today.
From the customer side, increasing demands are driving portfolio changes and growth at an unprecedented pace. Expanding and changing channels are increasing the ways that customers demand product and service, and private label and store brands are creating pressure for shelf presence.
From the supply side, food and beverage companies face tight regulations,
commodity pricing, and stricter freshness requirements and date sensitivity.
These issues not only create cost pressures that require a responsive supply
chain, but drive a lower
cost-to-serve model to retain or create a competitive advantage.
What does this means from a supply chain perspective? Our clients need a much tighter understanding of Demand and Volatility; SKU proliferation, portfolio management, and promotional activities now have to be part of the overall planning process. Further, while manufacturers and co-packers have made great strides in overall operating effectiveness, their response to variability, new regulations, food safety issues and changing demands is where the real benefit lies for your organization. This is what drives the ability to expand market share and reduce costs.
Plan4Demand has worked with 40% of the top 100 Food & Beverage companies providing solutions in critical areas such as:
- Managing and planning for demand in a heavily promoted category or market
- Gaining insight into demand using syndicated data, POS, history, and customer collaboration
- Synchronizing demand with supply to improve customer service levels, increase velocity, and lower inventories
- Incorporating date sensitivity into the planning process to reduce distressed raw material and finished goods inventories
- Streamlining distribution networks to optimize the total cost to serve customers
- Supporting a combination of DC/warehouse and Direct Store Delivery (DSD) models
- 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 recall and tracking capabilities
- Benchmarking and score carding within the industry and among customers and suppliers in food and beverage
- Designing and deploying a sustainable sales and operations planning
process that drives to one-number planning
