This manufacturer recognized the significant benefit of streamlining its end-to-end planning process on one platform from demand signal management, global supply planning, and inventory planning. They wanted to match demand and supply across the globe, support scheduled order demand and improve planner productivity with extensive use of exception workbenches.
o9 Digital Brain for Machinery
An American corporation that designs, develops, engineers, manufactures, markets, and sells machinery, engines, financial products, and insurance to customers via a worldwide dealer network. It is the world’s largest construction equipment manufacturer.
Sustainability Impact
Forecast accuracy improvement reduces exped logistics as well as excess inventory
Business Scope Challenges
Planning across a global network
The company struggled to plan across an interconnected global network to handle the global distribution requirements from company owned manufacturing plants, subsidiaries, and third-party manufacturers
Opportunity
With o9, the company conducts (BOD-based) network planning, accounting for global, dependent, and independent requirements. The time-phased roll-ups allow for rapid inventory moves and align customer and supplier calendars.
Demand/Supply Matching
Long lead times and a complex global supply chain made supply and demand matching a resource-intensive, manual effort.
Opportunity
With o9, they respond to customer demand with a supply plan updated with frequent refreshes of on-hand inventory, receipts, ASNs, etc. Exception management workbenches target shorts, surplus, lot size, and ship day exceptions.
Track forecast variation and generate consistency
Correct outliers and forecast anomalies by comparing lagged demand projections in order to have a best-fit final forecast.
Opportunity
With o9, the company automates actions based on business rules, leveraging global visibility to identify exceptions via a Demand Cockpit used by demand and forecast analysts.
Value Delivery
Key Functionalities Implemented
The Global Replenishment Plan was implemented to have the right quantity of the right part at the right time and location. The output of the demand signal management is netted against the in-transit material and rounded up to the lot size, which is then used to drive the optimal replenishment plan.
Systems Replaced
Home-grown solutions, SAP, and Excel.
Customer Benefits
Success Factors — 3 reasons why o9 was selected
- “Due to resilience through design, go-live planning, go-live, and post- production support. It is because of that engagement and drive that the company has a solution that will enable planning and executing as a single global network versus that of 5 regional networks.”
- Ability to connect and integrate with diverse ERP landscape (SAP, Glovia, Legacy).
- Flexibility to migrate to the company’s infrastructure after starting on o9’s public cloud offering.
KPI Impacted
- Inventory savings of $12M.
- Operational efficiencies in managing multi-currency.
- Ability to grow the business without adding headcount.
