Blue Yonder has helped Swire Coca-Cola achieve higher planner productivity, better inventory management and an improved understanding of demand drivers and customer behaviors. We can optimize our demand, supply and production planning solutions to simultaneously balance customer service, cost and utilization outcomes — while also respecting complex manufacturing constraints and rules.
Improving agility by implementing a daily planning cadence
Previously Swire Coca-Cola relied on a weekly forecasting and production planning cadence. However, that limited our ability to respond to fast-changing market conditions. Blue Yonder enables us to forecast and plan on a daily basis, which supports greater agility. Blue Yonder’s automated planning capabilities have also reduced our time required for production planning in our Zhejiang factory by 76%, supporting a faster response in our factories. Blue Yonder also increases our near real-time visibility into network-wide inventory levels. As demand changes, our entire supply chain can respond in a synchronized manner.
Reducing changeovers drives cost and service benefits
Production changeovers are not only expensive, but they also slow our response times and reduce our production efficiency. Blue Yonder helped decrease the overall number of changeovers at our Zhejiang factory by 5.2% year-over-year. The time required for changeovers at that facility was reduced by 6%. This positively impacts our productivity and profitability.
Solution benefits
Blue Yonder’s demand planning capabilities consolidate near real-time demand signals, as well as external variables, across Swire Coca-Cola’s markets. The company can react swiftly when conditions change and continue to make accurate, profitable decisions about production and inventory staging. Supply planning and production sequencing capabilities from Blue Yonder automate the analysis of diverse factors such as demand signals, customer service targets, safety-stock policies and shelf-life constraints. The result? More accurate, profitable plans that match supply with demand. Swire Coca-Cola’s end-to-end Blue Yonder Planning solutions enable the company to manage the inflow and use of raw materials, as well as intelligently and profitably distribute manufacturing tasks across its production network. They support a synchronized response across the supply chain.
