Wholesale Inventory Management
A high service level represents a deciding competitive advantage in the wholesale industry. All too often, guaranteeing a high service level results in high levels of safety stock. Successful and efficient materials management in the wholesale industry aims to optimize inventory levels with minimum effort, without jeopardizing the capacity to deliver.
Overview
Wholesale traders are continually expected to be able to react quickly to fluctuating market demand. Customer service requirements are on the rise while at the same time, internal cost pressures remain. The need for sufficient product availability with regard to cost factors is thus a key function both in the technical and consumer goods trades. ERP and warehouse management systems, with their conventional forecasting and procurement functions, are often not able to cope with these demanding requirements.
Contact
Christoph Wiericks
Consultant
Tel: +49 (0) 2408 / 9456 - 1333 c.wiericks@informinform-software.com
Solution ADD*ONE Features
ADD*ONE offers a functional package tailored to the specific challenges of wholesale operations. The add-on software provides support in all purchasing processes. Below you will find an overview of the main product functions:
- Forecasting future demand
A comprehensive analysis of past demand variations creates a reliable basis for future forecasting. Varying consumption patterns including trends and seasonal sales are identified, and reliable demand forecasts are calculated.
- Integrated promotion planning
Integrated planning of sales promotions for an automatic consideration of increased or non-predictable sales
- Calculation of cost-effective order proposals
Dependable decision proposal for each article using an intuitive workflow that identifies the need for immediate action or controlling
- Optimized procurement logistics
An overview of each purchase order and supplier conditions is provided in order to take advantage of potential delivery discount.
- Controlling
Informative analyses of past, present and future inventory development. Special reports and performance indicators also support the supplier controlling process.
- Management by Exception
The software eliminates routine tasks, automatically showing planners which actions need to be taken to avoid i.e. stock-out situations. Intuitive graphical displays show planners the most urgent tasks to complete, enabling them to manage by exception.
- High degree of automation
Simple control and maintenance of a large assortment of items through automated processes, i.e. automatic order approval of items with high forecast quality
Benefits
ADD*ONE provides users with a sustainable optimization of their inventory management process. With ADD*ONE Inventory Optimizer you can expect to:
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Maximize availability
Obtain a delivery capacity of close to 100% through high-quality planning.
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Minimize effort
Reduce your planning effort by 25 to 50% through the reliable automation of purchasing decisions.
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Reduce inventory
Reduce your inventory by up to 40% while at the same time increasing availability.
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Reduce procurement costs
Cut procurement logistics and goods receivable costs with optimized orders and batch sizes.
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Increase transparency
Gain an overview and control over your entire inventory assortment.
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Recoup investment
Experience a return-on-investment within months of your purchase.
Minimum Shelf-Life
Consideration of best before dates
The Minimum Shelf Life component considers expiration dates of perishable goods in the course of the inventory planning process.
Based on the FiFo rule (First in, First out) and considering the current plan situation, ADD*ONE checks the inventory for imminent exceedance of sell-by dates and automatically creates write-offs if need be. Those write-offs are then separately displayed in the user interface.
The write-offs are additionally considered when calculating order proposals. ADD*ONE then automatically generates proposals for reorders. You can learn about critical stock situations which result from the write-offs using a separate planning criterion.
Short product lifecycles / New articles
Predicting future demand
Many companies across various industries deal with short product life-cycles and are often required to release completely new products based on market demand. Predicting future demand for these new can be very difficult. ADD*ONE offers a solution to this problem.
On the one hand, forecasts for items with very little historical data can be created using a specialized short-term forecasting procedure. On the other hand, links between new items and reference items (predecessor/successor) can be established. Historical data from the preceding article can be used to create a forecast for the replacement product.
References
Contact
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