Johannesburg, 09 Jan 2009
English fine china producer Wedgwood has selected an advanced supply chain management (SCM) solution to help improve its global forecasting and planning capabilities, reduce inventory and boost the productivity of its supply chain across all operations.
Jane Thomson, MD of Softworx, an EOH company and distributor of Infor in sub-Saharan Africa, says visibility is the most import aspect of a supply chain. “Having a single, global view of the 'truth' provides a foundation for your sales and operations, thereby helping you to achieve measurable service improvements. This is where Infor's Demand Planning component comes in. Packed with rich functionality, the solution increases forecast accuracy, shares information and improves the sales and operations-planning process.”
It was the acquisition of Royal Doulton by Wedgwood in 2007 which provided a catalyst to review its supply chain processes across the group. Wedgwood's existing supply chain software had become inflexible, difficult to upgrade and was not aligned to the future needs of the business. In contrast, Royal Doulton was seeing substantial improvements to its inventory and forecasting accuracy following a deployment of Infor SCM Demand Planning software. After a thorough validation exercise, Wedgwood decided to adopt the same solution for its global supply chain operations.
Wedgwood selected Infor SCM Demand Planning because it contained functionality perfectly matched to its business requirements, and could easily manage the forecasting, inventory and replenishment of the company's tens of thousands of products across the world. The solution is expected to help Wedgwood improve visibility of its global supply chain through a combination of enhanced statistical forecasting, collaboration across all its operations and tighter control over its inventory and distribution replenishment processes.
Stephen McAdam, IT Director, Wedgwood, says Infor SCM Demand Planning is a core component in realising the company's long-term strategic vision of a more consistent, integrated approach to supply chain planning across all companies within the group. "Having witnessed the success of Infor SCM Demand Planning within Royal Doulton, we were impressed with its depth of functionality, robustness and ability to scale to our global requirements. The solution will help us to be far more proactive in the management of our supply chain which, in turn, will enable greater focus and result in higher profitability."
Infor SCM Demand Planning is expected to go live in March 2009 for 30 users across the UK, Europe, Asia, Canada and Australasia.
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