Success story

Tillamook County Creamery Association achieves growth with strategic supply chain planning.

Logility helped Tillamook gain visibility and optimize its digital supply chain planning to support aggressive expansion goals.

25% Icon arrow up

Improved forecast accuracy

75% Icon arrow up

Decreased finished goods inventory

98% Icon arrow up

Increased fill rates

$4.2 million

Saved in spoilage and obsolescence

25% Icon arrow up

Improved forecast accuracy

75% Icon arrow up

Decreased finished goods inventory

98% Icon arrow up

Increased fill rates

$4.2 million

Saved in spoilage and obsolescence

Challenges

Tillamook County Creamery Association (Tillamook) manufactures and sells high-quality dairy products including cheese, yogurt, ice cream, sour cream and butter. 

Tillamook needed a planning system with the capacity to scale with the company’s strategic growth ambitions. With an expanding product portfolio that must be aged up to eight years ahead, a rapidly expanding customer base and a goal of hitting a 99% company-wide fill rate, Tillamook needed a more sophisticated planning approach to replace its Excel-based efforts. 

Rapid growth

Growth across locations and channels revealed ineffective systems and processes not equipped to scale accordingly.

Siloed departments

Tillamook needed to break down siloes among planning, finance and sales and offer better ways to improve cross-functional information-sharing and collaboration.

Meeting demand for slowly-aging product

Nearly two-thirds of cheese products must be aged between nine months and eight years before going to market.

Growth in products and customers

Visibility into demand, supply, inventory and production are critical for Tillamook’s success.

Tillamook Achieves Growth with Strategic Supply Chain

 

Solutions

As Tillamook’s business grew more complex, the company transitioned from forecasting at an item level to an item-location level in order to get the best possible signals about demand. The team also integrated the sales and statistical forecasts so planners can quickly compare their system-generated numbers to those provided by the sales team. 

Demand Planning and Optimization

Inventory Planning and Optimization

Supply Planning and Optimization

“Building more accurate and more granular forecasts has allowed the supply chain team to have more credible conversations, drive consensus forecasting and have a seat at the executive table,” says Brad Blasi, demand planning manager. As a result, Tillamook increased its forecast accuracy from 70-80% to 85% with Logility. This significantly more reliable demand plan enables the company to synchronize inventory investments, production and distribution to serve a growing customer base while reducing inventory and obsolescence. 

Tillamook plans its finished goods inventory based on days of supply and perishability. For example, the seasonality capabilities in Logility Inventory Planning and its seasonality intelligence help the company pre-build inventory to meet summer ice cream demand spikes. The co-op also uses Logility to optimize conversion locations, expiration dates and co-manufacturers. 

Results

With comprehensive supply chain planning, Tillamook decreased its finished goods inventory by 50-75%, decreased swings in short- and long-term cheese to age needs and met inventory targets. 

Logility enabled Tillamook to migrate away from planning replenishment orders in error-prone Excel spreadsheets and a manual, labor-intensive procurement process. With the visibility and automation from Logility, the planning team can focus on exceptions and value-adding activities while allowing the Logility solution to automatically release orders into its ERP system. This new automated and streamlined procurement method reduces errors and accelerates processing time.  

Tillamook leverages Logility Manufacturing Planning for capacity planning and “what-if” scenario analysis to enable capital expense improvements. The supply chain planning group also handles company-wide, long-range budget planning. 

Our strategic growth plans require greater visibility and a flexible platform for both digital and operational supply chain success. Logility has been a key partner in support of our long-term goals and we look forward to new opportunities in the future.