Challenges
Glen Raven is a global provider of innovative fabric-based solutions for applications in the awning, marine, furniture, flooring, protective, military and geosynthetic markets.
Glen Raven needed to grow top line revenue efficiently, increasing service levels to customers without increasing inventories.
Ineffective planning
As the company’s volume grew, manual planning methods became cumbersome and spreadsheets were no longer viable.
Broadening assortment
Complexities increased as the company offered a wider assortment, increasing SKU counts at every level in the Bill of Materials.
Managing inventory
In a business model that is largely make-to-stock, increasing SKU counts at every level of the BOM has huge implications on effectively managing inventory.
Maintaining service and quality
A complex supply chain consisting of global suppliers, manufacturers and customers across several unique industries meant Glen Raven had to change its supply chain processes and solutions.
Solutions
Prior to Logility, Glen Raven used multiple planning workflows from different stand-alone applications. A big assumption was that forecasts were feasible from a material availability standpoint. Because several lines of its business share capacity and raw materials, it’s a challenge to manufacture efficiently when peak sales or production cycles overlap. “Individual planners could unknowingly exacerbate the problem by issuing excess production orders or issuing orders earlier, which resulted in the misallocation of valuable capacity or material resources, and negatively impacted service,” explained Ajay Bhardwaj, director of planning at Glen Raven.
“We now use Logility to model our entire supply chain including constraining key capacity resources and material availability. Logility gives us the ability to produce plans that are consistent, reliable and feasible,” Bhardwaj added.
Results
Glen Raven realized significant benefits across the organization following the implementation of Logility. The company now operates on a single plan to facilitate its sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. Forecast accuracy measured by Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) improved by 50%, while the company continues to experience growth in its business. Additionally, Glen Raven saw further improvements in on-time delivery performance.
Today, the supply chain team can quickly provide the sales organization with a detailed statistical forecast at multiple planning levels. This visibility allows the sales team to add market intelligence which helps all teams develop a more accurate starting position for the annual business planning process. In addition, Glen Raven now has a monthly standard workflow that helps streamline its supply chain operations.
With Logility, Glen Raven has reduced inventories, improved service levels and increased sales volume. It has also reduced forecast error by 50%, increased on-time deliveries and created a single, integrated business and operating plan.