Ahlers and Coupa help a chemical group to reconfigure its supply chain
With an increasing number of warehouses across Europe, the client's inventory management was decentralized. Each site was therefore planning its inventory independently, and the company which lacked visibility in inventory levels was registering increasing costs.
Ahlers and Coupa Supply Chain Design & Planning powered by LLamasoft's solution started by identifying which product was stocked in which location, the inventory levels, and the working capital for each warehouse. Once all this information was available on the LLamasoft platform, the next step was to implement a new inventory management strategy, optimize storage by product type, reduce the number of active warehouses, and centralize planning through state-of-the-art technology.
"Our client's challenge was that after experiencing strong growth in its business, particularly through acquisitions, it no longer had good visibility of its entire supply chain," explained Didier Duponselle, Supply Chain Solutions Director at Ahlers.
The first phase of the project took 6 weeks and covered 20% of the business, i.e., 18 warehouses in Europe and some 3,000 SKUs, resulted in a roadmap and several "quick wins", including the centralization of the main slow-moving SKUs in two warehouses. The customer has managed to reduce its working capital by 35% and its procurement costs by 10%.
Moreover, thanks to an intuitive AI-based platform, it is now able to make strategic decisions and manage any changes in its supply chain. The project is now entering a second phase: the extension of the study to the entire global business, i.e., around 100 warehouses and some 10,000 SKUs. Implementation of the recommendations is scheduled for after the summer.
Our software solution enabled Ahlers to model the supply chain allowing to get visibility and reliable output, to propose a new inventory management strategy at both a tactical and strategic level, optimize storage by product type, and reduce the number of active warehouses," said Matthew Woodcock, vice president for EMEA at Coupa Software.
