Business Challenge

St Regis needed a planning solution to enable them to manage a make-to-stock process using the following business techniques: ❖  Demand forecasting based on input from customers - collected by the sales teams ❖  Capacity planning to ensure that all demand could be met within a month and all machines kept running at full capacity ❖  Inventory planning to manage the stock levels in line with customer service agreements

Business Benefits

  • Service levels to the customers increased from 82% to 91% with reduced resources and assets
  • Monthly allocation process  enabled better capacity utilisation without “panic” sales at low prices
  • Warehouses managed within capacity with appropriate stock levels
  • Customer satisfaction enabled new contracts to be secured with more regular business and less “spot” business
  • Improved budgeting and operational planning resulted from the consensus achieved in the sales meetings

The I-Plan Solution

St Regis turned to I-Plan for the solution to these issues, following the solution delivered to International Paper’s Industrial Packaging division, a similar business to St Regis.  The following I-Plan modules were used:-

I-Plan Demand

I-Plan Inventory

Message Router

I-Plan Demand.  Sales staff amend the baseline forecast (if necessary) to reflect customers requirements for the following 3 months.  All forecasts were automatically consolidated in I-Plan and reviewed by Customer Group and Product Grade .

I-Plan Inventory.  Using the powerful statistical analysis generated by the forecasting engine, St Regis were able to classify the product range into suitable categories for inventory planning.  Fast movers have their safety stock levels based on demand variability.  Medium (B) items are stocked on a forecast cover basis – 7 days of stock, based on the customers forecast.  Slow movers were not stocked but made to order.  I-Plan then generated suggested production orders every night, which the production planners review and confirm daily.

Partner Integrated Solutions

❖  S-Plan from Greycon

S-Plan was used to create production schedules for different grades and basis weights on each PM.  I-Plan then allocated demand to the most appropriate run in there schedule.  A monthly sales meeting reviewed the supply / demand balance and the plans were amended based on agreed trade off’s between production and sales.