The best plans come through cross-function input. So rather than keeping the plan to itself, we encourage supply chain teams to share and collaborate – not to avoid blame but to mitigate risk and maximise the potential upside of reduced costs and increased sales.
Improving the supply plan through greater visibility
Within ToolsGroup SO99+, the Supplier Collaboration Hub (SCH) is a web-based portal for publishing the company’s supply plan. It is a visibility and collaboration platform for enhanced planning with suppliers across the extended end-to-end network.
With ToolsGroup SO99+ providing a powerful optimisation engine, SCH publishes planned delivery quantities to major vendors and gets back confirmation or variations from the vendor. Because ToolsGroup SO99+ creates a min-max replenishment tunnel, SCH can communicate an extra degree of freedom to the supplier network, allowing them to optimise their operations around a range of available options.
SCH provides a work flow for suppliers to communicate revisions to the supply plan. The web-based portal provides a simple-to-use environment where inexperienced users can collaborate in the supply planning process. SCH adds web-based scalability, seamlessly integrated with ToolsGroup SO99+.
The net result is a single consensus supply plan that can then be fed back to Supply Chain Planning (SCP) or Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) process. SCH can be configured for both “upstream” and “downstream” collaboration. In the upstream configuration, supply proposals are shared with the company’s suppliers. In the downstream configuration, VMI proposals are shared with the company’s dealers.
“The flexibility of consultants during all this change was world-class … So far this project has gone far better than we ever could have imagined … We’ve actually managed to grow our revenue and reduce our inventory costs, so I’m very pleased.”
- Chris Clowes, Supply Chain Manager, Costa Express
"Brookes Retail has proven to be an ideal partner in helping O2 plan a supply chain that can respond to changes in demand"
reduce out-of-stocks and increase on-shelf availability
About Brookes Supply Chain Solutions
Brookes Supply Chain Solutions, the official UK distributor of ToolsGroup SO99+ supply chain software, brings together the best supply chain people, processes and technology to create sophisticated, highly automated demand-driven solutions which deliver measurable and sustainable business value.
We offer market leading consultancy, software and managed services for inventory optimisation, demand forecasting and product replenishment planning.
We understand the challenges enterprises face in a digital economy with high customer service and investor performance expectations.
Related Resources
ToolsGroup’s SO99+ addresses the challenge of synchronising retail demand and supply by offering a single integrated system
