PLANNING & SOURCING
We use multi-echelon inventory optimisation to help businesses reduce inventory and cut waste
“ And let ’ s say a customer wants to change the formulation of a product . Here , they would want to know exactly how much inventory of the old product they have left before introducing the new product . Inventory optimisation can help tremendously in this way with reducing spoilage and waste in the supply chain .”
Even in complex consumer-goods markets - where sales of one product might impact demand for the same company ’ s other products - SAP can help keep inventory on track in terms of carbon footprint - to manage those phase-in / phase-out processes . And thanks to better support of artificial intelligence ( AI ) these processes now happen in more real-time and low-touch .
“ Managing inventory for interrelated products can be a massive problem ,” admits Vallejo . “ This is where demand planning built on AI and ML comes in . We can use this tech to look at patterns and interrelationships between not only the products themselves but between the products and other factors , such as the economy , the environment and the market . One simple example is how the price of steel and oil impacts the portfolio mix and prices in automotive prices .”
AWARENESS THE BIGGEST BARRIER TO PROGRESS ON SUSTAINABILITY But of course , integrating sustainability into enterprise-wide systems and processes can be hugely challenging for companies . Often the biggest problem is one of awareness .
“ There is a lack of awareness of how important sustainability is as a planning discipline ,” reveals Vallejo . “ We often see companies create offline afterthe-fact sustainability reports - maybe on how they did on this front in the previous quarter .
“ The biggest challenge is making them realise that their sustainability
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