I get a lot of requests for customer case studies.  In particular, a lot of companies that I talk to find they are struggling with inventory management best practices in the midst of their 21st century supply chains.  This is not suprising because the more globally distributed the supply chain and the more volatile demand, supply and product, the bigger the inventory management challenges are.  In many companies, it’s hard to get an accurate view of what inventory you have, and equally hard to efficiently leverage this “asset” to meet ever-changing business situations.

It just so happens that we have two customer stories that we can share that focus on these inventory management challenges.

The first is MC Assembly – a leading contract manufacturer.  Their customer spotlight has just been posted on our website.  Tom Rossi, vice president of procurement and materials says “Inventory turns have doubled and our excess / obsolete inventory is at an all time low. Our customers feel secure in knowing that we are managing the supply chain and not letting it manage us!”

There’s also a new article here in Supply & Demand Chain Executive featuring Kinaxis customer Alcatel-Lucent.  The article explains how, prior to the merger between Alcatel and Lucent, Lucent used Kinaxis RapidResponse to help reduce inventory from $6 billion to $1 billion over 3-4 years.  Arvind Ballakur, senior manager of supply chain and procurement at Alcatel-Lucent, goes on to say that “when the merger happened, we looked at various ‘what-if’ solutions that were in use at each company and selected RapidResponse as the key engine for all of Alcatel-Lucent.  Around April or May of last year, about four months into the merger, we started modeling the joint company’s in-house and outsourced operations.  By the end of this year we will have modeled 90 percent of the Alcatel-Lucent internal and external facilities, so we can provide a capability picture for all of the company.”  He goes on to say that “many people from the Alcatel side were surprised at its capabilities.  They had never seen a solution like this work company-wide.”

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Tags: Demand-supply balancing, Inventory, Supply chain
Posted in Supply chain management
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