Demand forecast and operations planning

Situation

  1. Company is a large dairy product brand in the U.S.
  2. Forecasting processes were not mature and the relatively low forecast accuracy led to production planning issues
  3. Sales, promotions and stock out data was improperly tracked and posed challenges for future growth planning
  4. Merilytics partnered with the client on a long-term basis to revamp and manage their demand planning and operations planning processes by creating demand forecasting models, shipment scheduling tools and operations related models

Value addition

  1. Generated forecast for top-retailers using statistical tools based on historical data normalized for promotions, distribution, stock-outs and non-recurring events; Adjusted the forecast for future promotions & distribution changes.
  2. Generated 100% consolidated forecast which includes forecast for tail of retailers
  3. Created a model to overlay various corporate adjustments at a customer and category level on the consolidated forecast
  4. Created a model to generate the wholesale shipment schedule for the Operations planning team based on the forecast after overlays

Our impact

  1. New sales and operations planning process was rolled out in December 2014
  2. The improved demand planning process and the models that Merilytics created helped the company improve their production planning and service levels