Personal Collection faced challenges in its demand and supply planning operations.
Its sales are omni-channel, mainly through house-to-house personal canvassing by dealers, in-store purchases, telephone sales, and from trucks or other temporary locations. With millions of dealers across the region—selling to households and collecting products from hundreds of stores to deliver products—placed enormous pressure on managing demand and fulfillment.
Personal Collection also has a complex, multi-echelon sourcing network consisting of several central and regional distribution centers, third-party logistics operations, its own manufacturing plants in Malaysia and the Philippines, and many contract manufacturers overseas—all with varying lead times to manage.
Manual production planning caused 80% product availability
Previously, production planning was manual and siloed, often making the wrong products in the wrong quantities. The inaccuracy of data also impacted production and on-time delivery. This adversely affected product availability—which was as low as 80%—and often caused stock-outs. Personal Collection could not meet market demands in this ‘pull’ model.
In 2022, Personal Collection decided the most significant problem to address first was its supply fulfillment—it needed to get the supply optimized, so the correct products could be in store at the right time.
“Initially, we had to fix our product availability at all costs, so we built inventories and safety stocks to eliminate the damage to our sales. We boosted product availability up to 96% and got happy dealers—but this was not a sustainable model as we were tying up too much working capital in inventory. We needed to optimize our supply chain. Having already deployed the Blue Yonder software at a global pharmaceutical giant in my previous role, I had every faith in its capabilities.”—Abigail Parazo, General Manager, Personal Collection Direct Selling, Inc.
Blue Yonder partners drive project to completion and beyond
To ensure a successful project, Blue Yonder partners GenieX and Smartlinks provided Personal Collection with various services, including data integration, batch frameworks, impact assessments, training, change management, and support services.
Blue Yonder Fulfillment uses MRP (materials requirements planning). It integrates to the Personal Collection’s NetSuite ERP system to optimize the company’s inventory and replenishment planning, create time-phased inventory plans (that now take just five days to complete), respect multiple time horizons (days, weeks, and months), and recognize the network’s interdependencies on customer service and inventory investment.
Now that Fulfillment has been fully adopted, the GenieX and Smartlinks team will focus on working with Personal Collection to move from a ‘pull’ to a ‘push’ environment with the implementation of the Blue Yonder Demand solution during 2025. This will provide better knowledge of promotions and forecasts, allowing Personal Collection to be organized centrally rather than driven by the stores.
Better demand forecasting will reduce safety stocks further
Having a more stable and dependable demand signal will help optimize product orders and plan optimum safety stock levels. Ultimately, better demand forecasting is expected to reduce stores’ safety stocks by around three days, which will significantly reduce wastage and improve cash flow.
