Product Suite

Food & Beverage

Related Industries

Clients

Ceres Beverages

"Since we’ve implemented Demand Solutions Forecast Management and Requirements Planning, our service levels have increased significantly. They used to be around 80 percent, but now that we have better control of inventory on hand as well as calculated forecast needs, we are able to more accurately fulfill customer orders. Our service levels have risen to 98 percent.”

Adisa Kalkan, Marketing Associate
Volpi

Inventory Challenges in the Food and Beverage Supply Chain

Food and beverage companies are constantly introducing new products, changing the mix, and adjusting package sizes to spur sales. With only a few large, key accounts, most food producers have no margin for error – especially considering that their products are stamped with expiration dates. When a major supermarket chain receives a shipment of ice cream pints instead of the 1.5-quart containers it ordered, or chocolate raisin in place of peanut butter vanilla, that’s when business is lost and revenues decline.

More so than other time-critical lines, food is a business in which it’s critical to deliver the right product at the right time in the right portion. You’re in a make-to-stock business, and your customers expect the product to be available exactly when they want it. Demand Solutions food and beverage supply chain planning software aids producers in launching new products, meeting seasonal shifts in demand, and transitioning to new container sizes as retailers hold the line on prices by offering smaller packages.

Ironically enough, inventory is both the problem and the solution to many challenges. Too much inventory and not enough of the right product is a common complaint in the business. That's not only a carrying cost, but also results in operating expenses with supermarkets whose contracts impose financial penalties for late and/or incomplete deliveries.

Food and Beverage Supply Chain Planning Solutions

With Demand Solutions supply chain planning software, food and beverage companies can:

  • Generate, manage, and collaborate on reliably accurate forecasts
  • Analyze sales history and forecasts in units, revenues, margin, and any other unit of measure
  • Automatically respond to seasonality, shifting growth trends, and product mix transitions
  • Objectively manage new product introductions
  • Forecast by SKU at the customer level and summarize in total by SKU, customer, sales channel, region, product family, supplier, and more
  • Generate production plans that keep inventories in sync with ever-changing forecasts and static capacity constraints
  • Drive an effective sales and operations planning process

View featured case studies on Demand Solutions for the  Food & Beverage Industry.

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