Notes / User-Meeting
Introduction
Discussed scope:
- Izberg plant, France
- 150 Finished Goods
User background - Paul Aubrun
Sales types
- 2 main channels: Direct Sales and Integrated distribution network; both those channels have end users and distributors
- Order types: MTO, MTS and intermediate where WIP is produced and finished at the service center → 60% of business is MTS, mostly in Integrated distribution network
- For MTS business, the customers ask for products with up to 1 week of lead time only
Demand planning
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Demand planner spends 2 days per week on update process (incl. data collection, synchronization with other teams and presentation).
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Manual process without back-up. If Demand planner is out, process is not performed.
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Output of demand planning file is sometimes difficult for commercial teams to read and understand ("find their parameters").
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Lack of flexibility when doing the quarterly Sales plan (medium term 6-9 months) because commercial teams want to see different aggregation, e.g. based on country or key account.
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Customers send forecasts but data cannot be used in central planning because forecasting only on aggregated level (only used locally).
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Collaboration with commercial teams to update weekly demand forecast is not well defined → “If tomorrow we have another tool that is more adapted to collaborative work, the process could be different.”
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Extra tool (Excel) needed to disaggregate demand forecast on article and weekly level for production and buffer planning.
A) Weekly update of Demand plan (short term horizon 1-4 months)
- Technical lead time at Izberg of 2 months - so forecast horizon of 2-3 months most critical
- Forecast done on aggregation per site (= only one value per month per site), split into SLT (Short lead time) and NLT (Normal lead time)
- Different methods and data sources to be used for the 4 different Sales types (Direct Sales and Integrated distribution network; both those channels have end users and distributors).
- Process (all info maintained in Excel)
- Review confirmed order book for the period
- Review remaining orders to book based on input from commercial team → process not well defined, Demand planner is kept in the loop of conversations with big customers and reaches out to commercial teams if needed
- If there is no order information available, the quarterly Sales Plan is used
- Excel file with results is presented to commercial teams at the end of each week. If there are questions or corrections from the commercial teams, they are reviewed.
- File is also shared with sites for production and buffer planning.
- File is loaded into B2Wise for buffer recalculation
B) Quarterly (monthly) update of Sales plan (medium term 6-9 months)
- Collaborative planning between demand planner and commercial teams
- Based on specific needs of commercial teams, different aggregations based on country or key account are created in Excel→ very manual and time-consuming
Stock management
- Steps
- Demand planning file is disaggregated via Excel tool per week and article
- Flat file is loaded into B2Wise tool to recalculate stock buffers of RM and WIP
- Output is passed to Production planner to inform them on new buffer targets
- Demand planning file is disaggregated via Excel tool per week and article
- 🚀 From July 2020 onwards, B2Wise will also be used for Finished Goods buffers
Data/ IT
- Tools in use: SAP, B2Wise, own Excel templates
- Data Warehouse is capturing all SAP + local data -> suggestion to integrate with Flowlity from there
- Article database