Inventory Balancing & Optimization

Multi-site company : Optimize your inventory!

Based on 16 years experiences in Supply Chain Management, DOWAP has designed a pragmatic and Ad Hoc solution in SAP APO and ECC that allows optimizing inventory positioning on the Supply Chain network.

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  Fast Implemention

  implementation in a few weeks and  immediate return on investment (ROI)

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  Flexible Tool

  Find a specific product all around your network

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  Simulation

  Simulate an unexpected customer requirement
  (take into account product switch)

Inventory Balancing & Optimization ?

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•  You have a good supply chain set up. Supply Chain processes are in place. Your planners are fully skilled and well trained on your supply chain solution.

  However: 

  • Despite a global good stock availability (sum of all location’s available stock), you regularly experience miss-positioning of inventory versus customer orders, representing a mismatch of stock and demand from a geographical perspective,
  • Despite you have the necessary global stock, you keep on getting production requirements at source, sometimes even in urgent mode because of safety stock violation downstream, which forces you to go expediting productions and procurement,
  • Your supply chain network strategy wants you to locate stock close to customer (target service level) however demand being volatile, you struggle matching demand and supply,

In fact DRP root concepts were not designed to rebalance stock position, just propagate requirement upstream, whereas fair share rule would apply in case of shortage scenario, when deploying goods from factory to DC or Regional DC to sub-DC.

Inventory balancing: align stock and demand through repositioning inventory and / or relocating demand

IB&O is available on SAP ECC, S4 HANA and APO version that analyzes demand, supply and inventory in your distribution network. IB&O cover short term expediting of miss-located stock positions as well as redeploying either demand or stock to the proper point of demand. It is based on native algorithms that everyone can understand, creating a true confidence in results from the user perspectives.

From dynamic scope (country, product family,…), flexible planning horizon and agile sourcing rules (priority, inventory strategy), IB&O generates a balancing plan proposition made of plan or firm Transportation Order (STO, STR). It also offers What-If capabilities to provide visibility into potential scenarios.

IB&O is a ready to use solution, with a fast implementation time (days), providing a very quick ROI

Benefices:

• Optimize utilization of stock by redeploying your invested capital instead of replenishing from source
• Organize redeployment of goods from source using your own business rules
• Use your formulas to calculate what is available and required quantities
• Implement an advance Supply Chain Solution as a quick win (2-3 weeks)
• Optimize your current Supply Chain solution investment with an incremental ADD-ON

• Scenarios: Inventory Balancing as a pre-planning engine

  

  In this case, Inventory Balancing engine is run ahead of your normal DRP planning run. It analyses stock availability over your network, as well as existing demand. This analysis is determined thru multi-selection parameters that scope the span of the analysis.

  Comparing available and requirement with a priority based approach, It then create proposition of stock transfer (planned or firmed) to redistribute available stock where demand exists. These proposition can be validated interactively or in batch, becoming additional supplies at destination.

  This redistribution process being done, the normal DRP planning engine runs, creating new supplies from source, only to cover remaining requirements. This lower much requirements on factories or vendor.

• Scenarios: Inventory Balancing as a Deployment/planning engine

  

  Inventory Balancing is the only tool used by your Supply Chain department, to deploy available supplies from registered source toward given destination locations. It is considered as the company deployment cockpit.

  This process of redeployment, dynamically determines sourcing arcs (links between sources and destinations), according to given location range allowed to be source and/or allowed to be destinations. This is done using the multi-criteria selection. No need to create complex set of sourcing data to determine each location’s role, to be source or destination. This is dynamically done within feasibility ranges. Thank to Inventory Balancing, a particular location may be a considered as a source during a period of extra supplies, and later be considered as a destination when requirement appear.

Both can be used together, according to business context evolving over time.