Knauf

Knauf’s transformation started by looking at how planning happened across the business. Demand forecasting was often managed in Excel. Data was spread across sites and systems. Collaboration depended heavily on email. Planners lacked a single, real-time view of demand signals, orders, inventory and supply across the network. As a result, significant time was spent gathering and reconciling information before planners could make decisions.

Knauf’s ambition is to move from manual, reactive planning to connected, increasingly autonomous decision-making — with technology handling repeatable work and planners focusing its expertise where it creates the most value: on exceptions, trade-offs and customer-critical decisions.

Blue Yonder Cognitive Solutions for Planning became a key part of that roadmap. Rather than attempting a big-bang transformation, Knauf chose a phased, modular approach: prove value, learn from real operations and build confidence before scaling further.

Start small. Learn fast. Scale with confidence.

The transformation began in 2023 at Knauf’s gypsum building materials business, one of the world's leading manufacturers, operating across more than 20 production sites. The business serves highly diverse markets and faces strong regional demand patterns driven by construction cycles, weather seasonality, and regulatory changes.

Knauf deliberately chose this environment as a starting point: if the approach could work across multiple business units and different market conditions, it could provide a strong foundation for scaling across the organization.

“Our journey really took shape in late 2025, when we aligned on the overall vision and designed the blueprint for demand planning. From there, we moved fast and went live in February 2026. Since then, the focus has shifted from implementation to reality: running it in operations, learning from it, and embedding it into day-to-day decision-making. That transition from design to execution is really a decisive moment where intent meets reality and becomes real,” said Dr. Martin Brown.

For Knauf, going live was not the end of the transformation. The next stage is supply planning, and connecting the supply response more closely to the demand signal.

“We have recently expanded our deployment of Blue Yonder Cognitive Solutions for Planning to our supply planning. This will ensure decisions are consistently reflected across sites, regions, and partners, not just in individual functions. To align execution, we are closing the gap between planning and day-to-day operations by incorporating real-time business feedback. So, plans can adjust as reality changes. By unifying decision-making with integrated business planning, we are bringing demand, supply, and financial perspectives into a single connected decision-making process. So we move from aligned plans to truly aligned decisions,” said Dr. Martin Brown.

The following phase will be integrated business planning, establishing a unified data model and connecting demand, supply and financial perspectives more closely. The final phase will introduce Blue Yonder Order Promising, closing the loop from plan to execution in 2027.

Technology is only half the transformation

For Knauf, changing its technology was only part of the challenge. It transformation required new ways of working, stronger data foundations, different KPIs and, above all, trust in the recommendations generated by its systems.

Moving from site-level, Excel-based planning to a more centralized, exception-based model means changing how planners spend time. Instead of manually preparing and overriding plans, the target operating model is management by exception, with 80% of SKU-location combinations ultimately planned without manual intervention.

“As part of our Knauf100 vision, by 2032, we want to have a fully automated and connected end-to-end supply chain to reach our target of 80% touchless orders. In our vision, the first person to touch an order should be our forklift driver. We also want to be the easiest to do business with by providing full transparency and showing clear service-level improvements. To realize our 2032 vision, we have to start now,” said Jochen Bansemir, Global Supply Chain Director, Integrated Planning, Knauf

This shift requires planners to trust the new approach while understanding where expertise matters most — on the exceptions, trade-offs and decisions that genuinely require human judgment.

Better decisions start with better foundations

The Blue Yonder Platform provides the backbone for Knauf’s evolving planning ecosystem, connecting demand, supply and execution and creating a more consistent flow of data and analytics.

Knauf’s role as an early adopter has also meant working closely with Blue Yonder’s Professional Services, Product Development, architecture, data science and support teams. Being early has meant navigating product gaps and roadmap dependencies, requiring patience, persistence and a strong partnership to solve issues and continuously improve the solution.

From better forecasts to better decisions

Knauf is already seeing the first signs of the change. Its new approach is creating clearer planning signals, greater SKU-level visibility and better alignment between planning and execution. The focus now is on embedding those capabilities into daily operations and continuing to learn as the solution scales.

“Blue Yonder helps us understand and manage customer demand, enabling accurate forecasts and efficient supply planning. We’re achieving real transformation in our supply chain, ensuring our customers have a reliable source of supply. So far, we are already seeing clearer planning signals, fewer last-minute changes, and better alignment between planning and execution. The biggest shift, though, is behavioral. Planners are spending more time on decisions and less time on data preparation,” said Dr. Martin Brown.

Making AI useful where it matters

Knauf’s longer-term opportunity is not to replace its planners with AI. It is to give them more time to do the work where human judgment makes the difference.

“I'm really excited about AI because I truly believe it's going to change the way we operate and our supply chains. And I think we are moving away from data gathering and reconciling data, freeing up space for our great people to really work on exceptions and important cases for our customers and make the judgment calls that really matter. Blue Yonder plays a key role in that, embedding intelligence directly into planning. Decisions happen faster and closer to the business reality,” said Dr. Martin Brown.

The customer is the ultimate measure

Knauf’s collaboration with Blue Yonder is part of a broader ambition to create an end-to-end digital supply chain by 2032. Blue Yonder Demand Planning is its first step, with Supply Planning being the next. Integrated Business Planning and order promising capabilities will progressively connect more of the chain — bringing demand, supply, financial considerations and customer fulfillment closer together.

The company’s ambition is not simply to automate individual processes. It is to create a supply chain that can sense what is changing, understand the implications, respond faster and continuously learn.

For Knauf, the ultimate measure remains the customer.

“Blue Yonder will help us reach several of our Knauf100 goals by building a future-ready organization that meets our customers’ expectations, maintains reliable processes, and drives customer satisfaction for the next generation of our business. For this, we need a more connected and efficient end-to-end supply chain solution to reduce waste, improve planning accuracy, and make better, more sustainable decisions across the network. Ultimately, Blue Yonder will enable us to act confidently to fulfill our customer demands on time and in full 95% of the time and thereby help Knauf to remain a reliable partner to our customers,” said Dr. Martin Brown.