The Flexibility You Need to Address Your Inventory Planning Challenges

The inventory carried to support customers and sales is a significant cost to manufacturing, distribution and retail businesses. Inventory planning techniques strive to minimize investments in inventory in order to reduce costs, maintain competitive advantage and increase ROI. But accomplishing these tasks in the volatile, complex world of supply chain management is challenging, particularly in an economy where sales are no longer keeping pace with historical trends and demand planning is more challenging than ever.

When you implement Demand Solutions Requirements Planning, either separately or integrated with our Forecast Management solution, you gain supply and demand visibility and cost savings. Demand Solutions Requirements Planning can help you better plan and manage your inventory positions by utilizing sophisticated, industry-standard forecasting and requirements planning algorithms.

As we’ve demonstrated time and again to customers using our supply chain management solutions, it is possible to optimize inventory and increase customer service levels. In fact, with the complete supply chain visibility and the uniquely flexible inventory planning strategies provided by Demand Solutions Requirements Planning, it’s actually pretty easy. With our powerful Requirements Planning system used in conjunction with effective demand planning techniques, we can help you fulfill more replenishment strategies and quickly optimize your inventory to help meet the needs of even your most demanding customers.

We hear it time and time again from prospective clients: “Shortcomings in our inventory planning process are killing us. Our inventory is higher than ever before, and yet our best customers are screaming for product?”

Murky supply chain visibility, poor forecast management techniques and reliance on inflexible systems all contribute to frequent stock outages, increased inventory costs and poor customer satisfaction. With Demand Solutions Requirements Planning, heightened visibility of material requirements result in a better allocation of resources and more efficient inventory planning and safety stock.

• Link demand for finished goods to the required raw materials or component parts to allow for changes in mixtures or yields and support the phasing in of new components
• Establish order parameters such as the Minimum Order Quantity and Lead Time for each product in each location. Set alerts for replenishment actions - in the form of Planned Orders - to meet your Inventory Objectives
• Temporarily reduce or build inventory and vary customer service levels throughout the year with Requirements Planning's Time-phased Safety Stock and Safety Time
• Manage by exception with Action messages. You determine which items require immediate attention
• Apply different inventory strategies to individual distribution centers or customer locations
• Mitigate forecast management risks that accompany long lead times. If a product oversells its forecast this week, Requirements Planning will automatically increase the next period’s planned orders

Inventory planning done right requires prioritization

Some items are more profitable than others. Some customers’ needs may be more critical than others’. Demand Solutions enables you to automatically assign ABC Codes to objectively quantify the relative importance of each item and each customer in order to optimize inventory levels. ABC codes can help you manage and tweak Inventory planning strategies.

Don't let constraints interfere with your supply chain management strategy

Most inventory planning systems are rigid and inflexible – unlike the reality of supply chain management.

Demand Solutions Requirements Planning takes constraints such as production and shipping capacities, seasonality, material shortages and allocations, labor and warehouse space into consideration in its planning calculations.

The perspective you need for efficient inventory planning and analysis of "what if" scenarios

Demand Solutions provides a panoramic view of even the most complex supply chains. As your inventory planning data and strategies change and ripple throughout your supply chain, you can quickly evaluate and execute new plans of action.

A number of companies use Requirements Planning as a multi-purpose tool – applying the system’s planning logic to their finished goods and raw materials planning as well as to their distribution plans. You can explore different planning scenarios using Requirements Planning’s “What-if” analysis to see the effects to your bottom line.

For example:

• What if we reduce the safety stock targets on our A & B items?
• What if we increase minimum order quantities on all items shipped to the West Coast?
• What if we consolidate three distribution centers into two?
• What if we accept that 37% forecast increase next month?

Requirements Planning provides informed responses to your dynamic challenges by enabling you to simulate a variety of different planning scenarios before you commit to a plan. And the system is fast! It lets you simulate the impact of different demand and supply strategies in just a matter of minutes.

See how Demand Solutions Requirements Planning has led to supply chain planning success for thousands of companies by visiting our customer videos page.