The marine electronics company, a specialist in providing navigation, marine instruments, and fish finding equipment to both the recreational and commercial marine sectors, was facing significant challenges in its supply chain management. The company was unable to integrate commercial, supply, and demand planning due to many siloed processes, leading to lost sales and excess inventory. The lack of end-to-end (E2E) visibility and the inability to respond to changing market dynamics further exacerbated the situation. The company was unable to create true E2E visibility across the supply chain due to a variety of disconnected planning systems operating in a siloed environment. Additionally, the company frequently experienced both inventory excess and shortages, with only 10% of the SKUs having healthy inventory across the network. The forecast accuracy for demand, especially in connection to new product introduction, was rather low.

A world-renowned retailer of musical instruments and equipment, with nearly 300 stores across the U.S. and a top-ranking direct sales website, was struggling with its merchandise planning system. The system was unable to keep up with the brand and channel needs, leading to disconnected planning processes and suboptimal decision-making. The retailer was grappling with managing sales for a mix of new and existing products. The existing processes were focused solely on the retail brick and mortar channel and were built in Excel spreadsheets, which were cumbersome and prone to human error. There was no holistic view of 'Open to Buy' across the enterprise. Furthermore, the company was missing alignment between pre-season planning and in-season forecasts as the processes were disjointed, non-standardized and managed in silos. The company also wanted to plan the growth and penetration of private label business and strengthen partnerships with top vendors.

The customer, an online retailer of office equipment, was facing challenges with their inventory management and delivery services. They were importing and delivering products directly to local distribution centers (DCs), which put each DC at risk of having excess inventory or running out of stock. The company was trying to mitigate these risks by building a replenishment center and delivering products from this center to each DC. However, the accuracy of their received sales plan was low and relied heavily on lagging indicators. Additionally, truck loading planning was done manually, a time-consuming process that often resulted in miscalculations of the required number of trucks. Lastly, the management of the minimum order quantity and complicated ordering conditions, considering the container’s capacity, were managed in Excel, which was not efficient.

The case study revolves around a leading producer of rolled aluminium and a global leader in beverage can recycling, which also serves customers in automotive, consumer electronics, construction, foil and packaging. The company has a complex, multi-stage production process that includes both internal and external operations. The challenge was to align these operations to maximize performance and streamline production. The company was also looking to reduce its carbon emissions. The planning processes were previously carried out via Excel, which was not efficient enough. The flow of information between the company and its operational partners was also crucial for driving performance improvements.

The multi-brand beauty retailer, operating over 600 stores across the Americas, was facing significant challenges in its planning process. The company was unable to collaboratively plan between central and local teams and conduct real-time scenario planning. The existing Merchandise Financial Planning (MFP) ecosystem was a combination of a legacy planning tool, data exports, and disparate Excel spreadsheets, leading to inefficiency throughout the planning process. The company's margin planning, a critical link to their global financial performance, was also problematic as they could not plan and review margin components and impacts. Furthermore, the marketing, sales, finance, and supply chain functions were operating in relative silos, each having their own assumptions and versions of the truth.

The company, a global leader in direct selling of beauty, household, and personal care products, was grappling with significant challenges in its supply chain management. The primary issue was the inability to sense demand and supply disruptions in a timely manner, which hindered their response to these disruptions. This was further complicated by a lack of coordination between the commercial, financial, and supply chain functions, leading to disjointed operations and decision-making. The company also lacked the capability to conduct real-time scenario planning, which prevented them from evaluating the financial impact of various scenarios and assessing the supply chain supportability of different scenarios. The marketing, sales, finance, and supply chain functions were operating in silos, each with their own assumptions and versions of the truth.

The multinational company, specializing in sensor manufacturing for fabrication and process automation, was facing significant challenges in its supply chain management. The company lacked end-to-end (E2E) visibility across its supply chain due to a multitude of disconnected planning systems operating in silos. This lack of visibility led to suboptimal decision-making, often based on opinions rather than data-driven facts. Additionally, the planning teams were spending a significant amount of time on manual number crunching activities such as data validation, collection, and manipulation. The company was also unable to conduct real-time scenario planning and evaluate the financial impact of different scenarios. The lack of ability to assess the supply chain supportability of various scenarios further compounded the problem.

A multinational coffee roaster and retailer, with a network of over 30,000 coffee houses worldwide, was facing significant challenges in its operations. The company's baristas were spending around six hours a day on administrative tasks such as ordering, inventory management, and forecasting, which was detracting from their ability to focus on customer service. Additionally, the company was grappling with a significant food waste problem due to inaccurate forecasting. This issue was complex, as each store stocked between 500 and 5,000 SKUs, and demand volatility was influenced by factors such as weather, assortment, pricing, and local events. The company had invested in data science teams and developed proprietary algorithms to predict the impact of weather on demand and store traffic, but these were not being utilized to their full potential.

The multinational athletic apparel and footwear brand, with a global presence, was facing challenges due to its quickly changing marketplace, long lead times, and fragmented manual tools. These factors were hampering forecast accuracy and fill rates. The company was struggling with a manual, time-intensive demand forecasting process that was unable to keep pace with market trends or shape demand effectively. Additionally, there was a lack of effective and efficient planning of aggregated raw material purchases, resulting in unnecessarily long lead times and less agility to react to changing demand. The process of matching supply and demand was complex and time-consuming, and it didn’t maximize the ability to respond to market volatility or quickly rebalance inventory based on demand location.

The Indian multinational paint company, engaged in manufacturing, selling, and distributing paints, coatings, and home decor products, faced significant challenges in its procurement process. The company had to manually adjust purchase requisitions daily to keep up with the fluctuating demand and supply. This manual intervention led to errors in purchase order (PO) placement concerning quantity and timing, which negatively impacted revenue and inventory levels. Additionally, the company had to synchronize tanker scheduling with the inventory levels at plants, aligning raw material with demand. There were also instances where POs would unexpectedly be cancelled or sought to be amended by suppliers, leading to potential revenue loss or delay.

The customer, an American multinational renewable energy company with operations in over 170 countries, was grappling with significant supply chain shifts. The company was dealing with an increasing number of complex configurations in its product portfolio and a rapidly expanding customer base. The planning processes for mold capacity planning, blade manufacturing, blade transportation, and blade installation at customer sites were disconnected, leading to cost and inventory issues. The company also lacked visibility of constraints and costs from mold capacity planning to installation at customer sites. Furthermore, due to fragmented business processes and supporting systems, the planning teams were unable to collaborate across multiple functions. The legacy processes and tools resulted in time-consuming planning and reporting efforts by planners, based on snapshots of data. The planning workforce spent the majority of their time number crunching rather than intelligent planning and decision-making.

The American multinational technology company, specializing in Internet-related services and products, was facing significant challenges in managing its global data centers. The company lacked an end-to-end material requirements planning system for capacity build-out, leading to issues with on-time delivery and inventory misalignment. The company's planning process for servers and networking equipment was highly complex and unworkable, causing disruptions in their data center delivery. Additionally, the company was unable to plan for the correct technology/supplier allocation mix, leading to artificial shortages. The company's manual processes were not scalable and were impacting predictability, cost coverages, and the ability to support the exponential growth of their business.

One of the world's largest beer companies, with over 400 different beer brands, faced significant challenges in its end-to-end planning process. The company was using SAP/APO, which was not providing the desired level of accuracy in forecasting. The use of lagging indicators in the forecasting process resulted in low forecast accuracy. Additionally, the company was unable to run fast and intelligent demand and supply scenarios, leading to suboptimal decision-making. All key scenarios were developed in spreadsheets, which was inefficient and error-prone. Furthermore, key planning processes such as demand planning, supply planning, S&OP, and S&OE were all executed in silos, without the ability to connect the dots across different time horizons. This lack of integration and visibility was a major obstacle in the company's planning process.

One of the world's largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies was grappling with highly manual and Excel-driven planning processes. The company was facing significant data challenges and a lack of inventory visibility. The data structures were complex and unorganized, making it difficult for the company to maintain an overview of all data and processes. This led to the absence of a single source of truth. Furthermore, the company's forecast accuracy was low, and it relied heavily on manual, lagging indicators in the forecasting process. This resulted in excessively high inventory levels. The company's focus was more on execution rather than on planning, leading to a lot of day-to-day volume management and firefighting.

One of the world's largest tire and rubber companies, delivering a wide range of tires to customers globally, was facing significant challenges in its operations. The company was struggling with inaccurate forecasting, which was predominantly based on lagging indicators. This lack of precision in forecasting led to a lack of visibility into supply risk and capacity prioritization. Additionally, the company was unable to effectively use drivers of demand to predict future trends. This resulted in frequent excesses and shortages in inventory, leading to potential inventory liabilities and the need for additional price promotions to clear inventory. The company's current Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process was inefficient and lacked visibility into supply risk and capacity prioritization based on financials.

The case study revolves around a major global tire producer that was grappling with highly manual, Excel-driven planning processes across various functions and time horizons. This outdated approach resulted in suboptimal decision-making and inaccurate plans. The company's strategic planning for the next 5-7 years was conducted without leveraging key market trends and macroeconomic developments. Furthermore, the company was unable to execute long-range rough-cut capacity plans due to the majority of constraint information existing as spreadsheets or tribal knowledge. The core planning cycles, including strategic, tactical, and operational, were not interconnected, leading to silos and suboptimal decision-making.

AFS Logistics, a third-party logistics company based in Shreveport, La., was faced with the challenge of tracking all shipments for its shipper customers. The company needed a technology partner that could provide visibility of shipments in transit. The solution had to offer document retrieval, electronic bill of ladings (eBOLs), and in-transit visibility of shipments. The company also required a solution that could provide one-to-many connections between shippers and carriers. The challenge was further compounded by the need for a solution that could automate redundant and laborious tasks, including shipment order recognition, quoting, booking, dispatching, tracking, document retrieval, and shipment reporting.

Mondiale VGL, the largest privately-owned international freight forwarding and logistics company in Australasia, was facing a significant challenge in maintaining visibility and control over its vast supply chain. The company, which handles over 500,000 containers and 25 million kilograms of air freight per annum, was struggling to provide its customers with real-time information about their cargo. The traditional method of manually checking ship and container status was not only time-consuming and inconsistent, but also impractical given the volume of cargo the company handles. Furthermore, the company operates in an environment where teams do not have the time for unnecessary phone calls or emails, making it crucial to rely on automated workflows, exception management, and predictive analytics to keep its customers informed.

A renowned chocolate and confectionary company was facing significant challenges in its supply chain. The company's primary goal was to monitor their active cooling Full-Truckload (FTL) transport, which moved chocolates from the manufacturing unit to depots using domestic transportation. This process involved several transporters, making quality compliance both essential and complex. The company was struggling with two main challenges. The first was a breach in quality compliance. The company noticed spoilage in some of their consignments, but the data from their 3PLs was delayed, second-hand, inaccurate, and unverifiable. Many packages were reaching the destination spoiled due to unchecked temperature excursions. The second challenge was the lack of actionable information. The company depended on vendors and transporters for data, but the data was often delayed, inaccurate, and sometimes even inaccessible. The company was unable to make timely decisions due to the lack of real-time visibility on the shipment’s location and condition.

The case study revolves around one of the world's largest ice cream manufacturers, with a yearly revenue of over $5.5 billion in the South Asia market alone. The manufacturer was grappling with challenges in its ice cream supply chain, particularly in maintaining the storage temperature between -18°C and -25°C. The company operates 20 plants in India, serving around 700 million customers with a diverse product portfolio. Each of these plants has several large cold chain-specific warehouses that need to comply with stringent norms. The company also has warehouses in distribution centers that need to adhere to the same compliance norms. The manufacturer was using a passive cold chain monitoring system, which was leading to inefficient operations and product spoilage. The passive system, enabled by temperature data loggers, was creating product loss at two places: warehouses and during transit. The company was also dealing with inefficient operations due to a lack of data repositories and fragmented temperature monitoring duties.

Cancer Research UK, a leading global charity dedicated to cancer research, has a vast retail division with 13 superstores and 580 shops. The organization was seeking to enhance the transparency of the ethical performance of its retail supply chain as part of its sustainability strategy. The challenge was to understand the supply chain better and continuously improve the ethical performance of their suppliers. The organization needed a solution that could provide a comprehensive view of the ethical performance of their global supplier base, thereby enabling them to drive continuous improvement in this area.

Co-op, a company with a strong commitment to ethical trade, faced the challenge of managing a large, complex, and growing supply chain. They aimed to increase transparency and maintain high labour standards across their supply chain, while also reducing audit fatigue among suppliers. The company recognized the need for collaboration with other retailers and industry stakeholders to address common responsible sourcing challenges. They sought a solution that would allow them to standardize audits and share them with multiple businesses. Additionally, Co-op wanted to build strong supplier relations based on trust and transparency, with the goal of achieving long-term and sustainable improvements to working conditions in their supply chain.

Ethical Merch Co, an Australian manufacturer and reseller of promo goods and branded apparel, faced a significant challenge as it began to grow and acquire large non-profit customers. While price was a crucial factor for their customers, Ethical Merch Co understood that brand reputation was even more critical. The company was faced with the challenge of providing their clients with ethically sourced products, a task that required a deep understanding of their supply chain and the ability to ensure ethical practices at every level. The company's Managing Director, Nathan Kingston, recognized the need to partner with a company that shared their strong business ethics and could help them meet this challenge.

Kellogg Company, a global leader in the food industry, was facing significant challenges in managing its supply chain sustainability in a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world. The company's SVP of Global Supply Chains, Alistair Hirst, identified four key challenges that were impacting the stability, risk, and sustainability of their global supply chains. These included political instability, climate change, food security, and urbanization. Political instability, such as wars and socio-economic imbalances, was affecting the company's sourcing and sustainability at a high level. Climate change was altering the world's growing regions, posing a threat to the company's food production. Food security was a major concern, especially in developing markets where the company hoped to expand its business. Lastly, urbanization was expected to increase the world's population to nine billion by 2050, with 70% living in urban areas, thereby increasing the demand for food while the resources remained limited.

Kellogg Company, a multinational food manufacturing organization with 33,000 employees, faced a significant challenge in managing its extensive supply chain. The company produces 1,600 foods in 20 countries and markets them in 180 countries, making transparency and sustainability crucial. Alistair Hirst, SVP Global Supply Chains at Kellogg Company, emphasized the need for a stable base to build a sustainable supply chain. The company's supply chain extends to multiple tiers, making it a complex task to understand and manage the entire process. The challenge was not only to reduce greenhouse emissions or energy footprint but to ensure sustainability throughout the end-to-end supply chain. The company also had to meet the expectations of its customers, particularly millennials, who demand transparency about the origin of their food and prefer companies that align with their moral compass.

Little Freddie, a premium organic baby food brand, was seeking to partner with reputable suppliers that not only met legal requirements but also shared their values on enhancing worker welfare and safeguarding good working conditions. The company used Sedex's risk assessment tool, Radar, to review countries' inherent risk ratings and identify specific risks when sourcing from these countries. The tool helped Little Freddie identify its Madagascan pineapple supplier, HavaMad, as a high-risk due to its location and the economic difficulties affecting businesses across Madagascar. The challenge was to reduce this risk and ensure a sustainable and ethical supply chain.

Molson Coors, the fifth-largest beverage company worldwide, operates in 100 countries and is known for popular beer brands like Coors Light, Miller Lite, and Carling. To compete in a global market, Molson Coors needed to maintain strict standards for themselves and their suppliers. They aimed to act ethically, responsibly, and in compliance with the law. However, they faced challenges in understanding their supply chain, setting measurable goals, and improving their processes. They also wanted to gain greater visibility into their suppliers’ operations and instigate conversations around sustainability risks and mitigation plans. Furthermore, they needed to enhance their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting to investors and improve supplier engagement and performance.

Oliver Bonas, a UK-based independent lifestyle retailer, was facing challenges in monitoring and improving the working conditions within their global supply chain. The company, which sources high-quality products from various countries with diverse cultures and economies, was committed to maintaining long-standing, trusting relationships with its suppliers. However, the administrative burden on their suppliers was high, and there was a lack of visibility into the ethical audits and factory and workforce details of their suppliers. The company's values of 'Work Hard, Play Hard and Be Kind' extended to their supply chain, and they were committed to doing business that was beneficial for everyone involved. Therefore, they needed a solution that would allow them to gain deeper visibility into their supply chain and engage with suppliers to monitor and improve working practices.

Reckitt, a global company with over 43,500 employees of 120 different nationalities, operating in 60 countries, is committed to diversity and inclusion. They believe it is their collective responsibility to build inclusion into everything they do, representing their people and the global community they serve. However, given the scale of their global supply chain and its structural gender inequalities, they faced a challenge. They wanted to identify and address the barriers to gender equality within their supply chain. The goal was to use the insights gained to drive change and promote gender equality within their supply chain.

Rémy Cointreau, a French family-run Group specializing in the production of cognacs, liqueurs, and champagne, was seeking to ensure responsible sourcing practices throughout their entire value chain. The company wanted to ensure that their suppliers, regardless of their location or industry, adhered to their responsible sourcing principles and guidelines. They aimed to set an example for their value chain that embodied their sustainability values, including policies that protect workers’ rights and respect the environment. Rémy Cointreau also wanted to promote transparency across their value chain and improve the lives of workers within their supply chain.