Supply Chain Management

Ensuring product availability with the lowest possible inventory or at the lowest possible cost is a crucial competitive advantage. If you do not know what the market demands, there is no chance of keeping up - just knowing what the sales department wants to sell does not help.

We use supply chain simulation for a detailed analysis regarding  

By using constraint analysis, we check and optimize your organizational processes and help you achieve an end-to-end planning chain.

Also check out our white paper on the topic: 

12 Best Practice Building Blocks for Powerful Sales Forecasting.

A sales forecast based on statistics or AI is not always enough to identify future market needs. The sales department might have expansion plans, offer projects or drive actions that are not included in statistical forecasts. Similarly, manufacturing capacities, financial restrictions or other constraints might not allow to meet the expected market demand. In such cases, complex coordination processes become necessary. The aim of S&OP is to carry these out in an organized and structured manner.

By using supply chain simulation and constraint analysis, we determine in such cases, for example,

For more information, have a look at our white paper:

21 design tips for successful sales and operations planning.

A large product portfolio can be a key success factor for a company. However, it can also quickly become a cost driver, undoing success, and threatening the existence of the company.

A broad product range inevitably includes many items that are in sporadic demand, often with few inventory turns. This, it is almost impossible to avoid cross-subsidization of fast-moving items by fast-moving items, the prices of fast-moving items rise and, as a result, the competition chases away part of the lucrative product range.

In an optimal product range, sales and logistical requirements are balanced. However, finding this right balance is not trivial.

Using empirical value stream simulations, we work with product management and sales to analyze the logistical impact of a changed product portfolio, prepare objective figures, use AI-supported algorithms to adjust the delivery readiness of your product portfolio across all items for optimal yield, and thus help you achieve a product portfolio that is balanced in terms of sales and logistics.

Helpful white paper:

"10 Best Practices for Product Portfolio Management."

High adherence to delivery dates, low working capital with good capacity utilization and high personnel productivity; finding an economic compromise between these goals is always a challenge.

By using logistic simulation and constraint analysis, we quantify the

Together with you, we implement improvement approaches for organizational and control optimization.

In this way, your company will move from operational hectic to the necessary strategic calm in production control.

At around 45%, material costs represent by far the largest cost block in the manufacturing industry, ahead of personnel costs (18.7%). This is reason enough to continuously look for ways to reduce material costs through more efficient use of the material employed! A properly designed value chain and clean logistical processes can contribute quite significantly to material efficiency, for example, by reducing scrap, stock reduction, better intercompany planning, lower wear and tear and lower scrapping rates.

Looking at the material efficiency perspective also uncovers entirely new opportunities to increase efficiency throughout the value chain.

A 1% reduction in material costs increases the return on sales by 0.5%.

Using constraint analyses, we systematically reveal potential for improving material efficiency, identify the key starting points for improving material efficiency and develop tailored measures.

Helpful white paper:

"Material efficiency: the pool of neglected savings potential"

The market demands shorter and shorter delivery times for increasingly specialized products and supply chains are becoming faster and faster. For many companies, the logistics business model no longer fits properly with the company's business model. The consequences: Despite everyone's efforts, costs rise and in the end the market penalizes your company due to poor delivery performance.

A cost-effective value chain is based first on a suitable and economical logistics business model and on the right balance between inventories and inventory costs on the one hand and the flexibility costs of procurement and production on the other.

Changing a logistics business model can be dangerous if you try it with "trial and error" and thus turn the real company into a testing ground.

It is safer, faster, and more cost-effective to simulate the effects in advance. In this way, we review and optimize your logistics business model, improve the structure of your value chain, and adjust the planning and scheduling model to achieve the required logistics performance at the lowest possible cost.

Delivery times are to become shorter and shorter, inventories lower and lower, delivery capability better and better, production processes more and more flexible, and suppliers more and more efficient: Agility is required to keep up with the competitors.

At the same time, the product portfolio usually grows and brings increasing complexity into the supply chain, planning and control processes, organizational processes, and structures.

To achieve effective and sustainable logistical optimization measures, it is necessary to record and quantify the overall logistical system with its interdependencies and to identify the right parameters for optimizing the overall system and to adjust them appropriately.

With the help of a digital twin of your entire value chain and your planning mechanisms, we simulate and test

By using constraint analysis, we focus on the necessary steps to be taken.

As the heart of the company, procurement and production planning pump the entire value and material flow through the company and the supply chain. Therefore, all business units and the company's profitability suffer from poor scheduling.

However, the dilemma of high delivery capability and low inventories cannot be escaped without suitable processes and methods.

By dynamically simulating the MRP processes and their effects in the supply chain, we identify the methodical, organizational, and strategic levers to put your MRP on a clear course.

We help you to anchor methodical improvements in your SAP/ERP software or to map them in add-on systems and to build up a tight and continuous planning chain.

Planning and MRP master data must be regularly fitted to the continuously changing constraints of each article. If this is not done, planning and scheduling results are inevitably wrong, decisions are based only on gut feeling and product availability and inventories turn into random results of arbitrary decisions.

On average it would take each planner three to six months per year to only keep the planning and scheduling master data up to date for which also specific expertise in ERP algorithms is needed. Thus, planners and schedulers mostly lack the time for these precise adjustments.

However, modern tools can maintain master data automatically. With our simulation, we help you in developing and implementing a rulebook that maintains your system correctly.

The logistical integration of suppliers and customers into one’s own supply chain provides opportunities for all partners, namely reducing inventory, lowering value chain costs while high service levels are maintained, and lowering total cost of ownership.

To achieve the most efficient value chain possible,

As part of the implementation, we help you map the necessary processes and mechanisms in your ERP system, carry out the coordination with your suppliers and customers, and set up the organizational processes.

Calculate, design and implement replenishment based on the supermarket principle

Kanban enables low cycle inventory, high service levels, and simple, reliable procurement and production. However, Kanban is not always a sensible and cost-optimal solution; additional mechanisms are often required to achieve the necessary product availability with the lowest possible Kanban inventories.

When designing Kanban control loops, the required service level and safety stock play an essential role.

With our specially developed simulation approach and algorithms, we help you to identify the right article spectrum for your Kanban systems as well as to correctly design and to regularly re-dimension your Kanban control loops.

We coach and support you in setting up your Kanban system and to connect it to your ERP or SAP software.

For more information, have a look at our white paper:

29 Best Practice Building Blocks for a Successful Production Kanban

Clever logistics controlling requires four essential elements:

Transparent data, credible KPIs, realistic target values, clear responsibilities.

We help you monitor and continuously improve your logistics model:

Also check out our white paper:

10 best practice building blocks for powerful logistics controlling

The performance of the SAP/ERP solution and the efficiency of the scheduling results depend largely on the quality of the master data and scheduling parameters. Thus, MRP setting and parameters need to be

The correct parameter settings can only be achieved with a dynamic simulation of the planning and control mechanisms and their effects on the value chain.

With our supply chain simulation, we have a unique tool for determining the correct parameter settings and mapping them in a rulebook that regularly and automatically maintains your SAP/ERP solution.

If required we also provide the tools necessary for implementing such an automatic rulebook.

For more information have a look at our white paper:

A Smart MRP for the Smart Factory !

Feel free to contact us for an exchange of experiences!

UK +44 20 38587489