The Challenges
- Data Integration
The required input data needs to be imported from all six systems, three times a day to support a 24 hour planning cycle that requires morning and afternoon revision of the supply plans and production schedules.
- System Responsiveness
The activity increased from a network of five sites to thirteen sites spread across South Africa impacting system responsiveness which required the hardware and network responsiveness to be evaluated.
- System knowledge/super user availability
Due to the multiple business system integration projects, the individuals with the system knowledge, acting as super users, were not readily available to the team, causing delays.
"OUTPERFORM Planning is the basis of our Integrated Lean Supply Chain and has already proven to be useful to bring our stock outs down"
Andrew Ferrett, Supply Chain Director
The Solution
- Single SAP platform
Moving the different businesses onto a single SAP platform, prioritizing the businesses that requires manual downloads.
- Product mapping tables
Product mapping tables were created to make a single master data list.
- Training
Training material was developed to enroll new plants
- Senior planners
Central team structure provides for dedicated resources to improve the Demand Driven MRP planning parameters in Outperform.
The Impact
Comparing Peak (Oct – Jan) 2015 to 2016, OOS (Out-of-Stock) reduced from 4% to 2.4%, avoiding 2M Cases of lost sales while finish goods inventory remained the same in nominal value.
