Success story

MilliporeSigma discovers the cure for successful replenishment planning.

Logility helped MilliporeSigma optimize inventory via alternate sourcing and utilization of excess stock, resulting in increased fill rate and improved customer service levels.

Challenges

MilliporeSigma is a leading life science and technology company that manufactures biochemical and organic chemical products and kits that are used in scientific research, biotechnology, pharmaceutical development and disease diagnosis. Its customers include life science companies, university and government institutions, hospitals and commercial labs. In the industrial area, MilliporeSigma markets stains, dyes, fragrances and flavors. 

With a large product portfolio, MilliporeSigma needed better global visibility in order to improve customer service levels, increase forecast accuracy and optimize inventory through a centrally controlled replenishment plan. 

Managing an extensive portfolio

MilliporeSigma sells around 100,000 chemicals worldwide, equating to 300,000 SKUs stocked at 20 global locations.

Forecasting and inventory management complexities

MilliporeSigma forecasts more than 7 million items for 80,000 customers with multiple ship-to locations, often as very small volumes.

Global growth

Efficient demand and replenishment planning processes are imperative and need to support roughly 100 people all over the world.

MilliporeSigma Manages Complexity

 

Solutions

MilliporeSigma’s growth is mostly due to acquisitions in the fine chemicals, biologicals and antibodies areas, and through expansion into new markets. Its central planning team works with any new locations to immediately deploy Logility in order to ensure a standard set of capabilities across the company. 

MilliporeSigma replenishes globally on a daily basis, and runs over eight million items through Logility overnight. “Logility keeps up with the pace of our business,” said Jeff Killion, director of global planning at MilliporeSigma. “The ability to get orders in the same day gives us a huge competitive advantage. Our cycle time to our customers, particularly customers in Asia, is as good as, if not better, than any of our competitors.” 

Demand Planning and Optimization

Inventory Planning and Optimization

MilliporeSigma forecasts products by region, and at the customer level for bulk business. Approximately seven million items are managed through Logility at a very high accuracy level without any manual intervention. Other core items are “A” items that the planning team has the ability to tune. “The flexibility to forecast at the customer level for some items, and forecast the bulk of the others systematically, was a huge advantage for us,” explained Killion. 

Logility’s simulation capabilities have led to increased service levels for MilliporeSigma. The company uses cost analysis to determine the potential dollar value of increasing the service level, by 10 percentage points, for example. MilliporeSigma is now better informed when making decisions and is able to not only improve service levels, but also meet budgets easily. 

Initially, the flexibility and speed allowed by Logility to immediately optimize the entire supply chain by looking at factors such as ocean freight and lot sizes, and forecast accuracy was the biggest focus for MilliporeSigma. Soon after, the company was looking for additional opportunities through Logility to take its supply chain to the next level. The company continues to increase customer service levels, optimize inventory and collapse cash-to-cash cycles. “Logility combines supply chain expertise with technology innovation and really fits the unique demands of our specialized business. There is no ‘silver bullet,’ but Logility comes close, giving us tremendous flexibility and tangible payback,” said Killion. 

Results

With Logility, MilliporeSigma was able to improve forecast accuracy for A, B and C items as well as customer bulk items, and leverage time-phased inventory policies to achieve desired service levels. It has reduced inventory via alternate sourcing and excess stock utilization, improved customer service levels, decreases cash-to-cash cycles and successfully optimized the entire supply chain. 

Logility keeps up with the pace of our business. The ability to get orders in the same day gives us a huge competitive advantage. Our cycle time to our customers, particularly customers in Asia, is as good as, if not better than, any of our competitors.