Micron operates in a very complex, manufacturing-based industry where demand changes quickly and products must move across the world just as fast. This means the company needs to make a series of complex decisions about what wafers to produce, where they will be produced, then tested, and where they will be promised. Adding to this complexity are silicon supply shortages, production constraints, high transportation costs, environmental concerns, and disruptions such as political escalations, extreme weather, and natural disasters.
Dynamic planning increases fill rates by 4% and streamlined consumption of excess inventory on day 1
With Blue Yonder, Micron transformed its processes from a long-term planning horizon and high levels of buffer inventory to daily planning, dynamic inventory movements, and rapid production shifts. On the first day of implementation of Supply Planning, Micron increased its fill rates by 4% and quickly repurposed excess inventory to support it.
Optimized planning leads to best in class customer conformance metrics
Blue Yonder Order Promiser helps the company strategically allocate scarce inventory to high-priority customers to provide them with a commitment and then internally track the churn based on four criteria: frequency, consistency, magnitude, and stability. The solution’s optimization engine ensures that inventory is accurately and profitably promised and can be delivered on time. Order Promiser has helped Micron achieve best in class customer conformance metrics, where original promise date (OPD) performance went up by 5% and entitled customer request date (eCRD) performance went up by 25%.
Consequently, Micron has become preferred vendor for an additional 45% of its customers.
Increasing accountability to people and the planet with data and generative AI
Blue Yonder’s cloud-based solutions have made Micron’s worldwide supply chain more agile, more adaptable, and more aligned with demand. They help drive its sales and operations planning (S&OP) processes with autonomous, data-driven decisions that maximize service, while minimizing costs and the distances traveled by products.
Micron is actively co-innovating with Blue Yonder on generative artificial intelligence use cases for supply chain planning. The focus is on how generative AI can assist human decision making and, in some cases, automate resolutions to improve planner experience and increase the ability to react to market shifts as they happen.
“We need to be accountable to the planet and to our own associates, so by deploying effective processes, we make sure their work life balance is intact. Working with Blue Yonder, while generating our master production schedule, we have an objective to minimize the miles traveled by our chips. As much as possible a chip is planned to get assembled, tested, packaged, and shipped from a single physical location. Earlier chips were moving across geographies for different manufacturing stages, for example from Malaysia to China, from China to Singapore, and from Singapore to Taiwan. With Blue Yonder Supply Planning, we create more stable and vertically integrated plans and save a lot of carbon emissions,” says Tyagi.
Micron has become a supplier of choice in the competitive global semiconductor industry, thanks in part to its adoption of advanced technology and dynamic planning practices.
