# Notes / User-Meeting

### Introduction

Discussed scope:

- Izberg plant, France

- 150 Finished Goods

User background - Paul Aubrun

### Sales types

- 2 main channels: Direct Sales and Integrated distribution network; both those channels have end users and distributors

- Order types: MTO, MTS and intermediate where WIP is produced and finished at the service center → 60% of business is MTS, mostly in Integrated distribution network

- For MTS business, the customers ask for products with up to 1 week of lead time only

### Demand planning

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Demand planner spends 2 days per week on update process (incl. data collection, synchronization with other teams and presentation).
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Manual process without back-up. If Demand planner is out, process is not performed.
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Output of demand planning file is sometimes difficult for commercial teams to read and understand ("find their parameters").
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Lack of flexibility when doing the quarterly Sales plan (medium term 6-9 months) because commercial teams want to see different aggregation, e.g. based on country or key account.
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Customers send forecasts but data cannot be used in central planning because forecasting only on aggregated level (only used locally).
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Collaboration with commercial teams to update weekly demand forecast is not well defined → “If tomorrow we have another tool that is more adapted to collaborative work, the process could be different.”
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Extra tool (Excel) needed to disaggregate demand forecast on article and weekly level for production and buffer planning.

A) Weekly update of Demand plan (short term horizon 1-4 months)

- Technical lead time at Izberg of 2 months - so forecast horizon of 2-3 months most critical

- Forecast done on aggregation per site (= only one value per month per site), split into SLT (Short lead time) and NLT (Normal lead time)

- Different methods and data sources to be used for the 4 different Sales types (Direct Sales and Integrated distribution network; both those channels have end users and distributors).

- Process (all info maintained in Excel)
  1. Review confirmed order book for the period
  2. Review remaining orders to book based on input from commercial team → process not well defined, Demand planner is kept in the loop of conversations with big customers and reaches out to commercial teams if needed
  3. If there is no order information available, the quarterly Sales Plan is used
  4. Excel file with results is presented to commercial teams at the end of each week. If there are questions or corrections from the commercial teams, they are reviewed.
  5. File is also shared with sites for production and buffer planning.
  6. File is loaded into B2Wise for buffer recalculation

B) Quarterly (monthly) update of Sales plan (medium term 6-9 months)

- Collaborative planning between demand planner and commercial teams

- Based on specific needs of commercial teams, different aggregations based on country or key account are created in Excel→ very manual and time-consuming

### Stock management

- Steps
  1. Demand planning file is disaggregated via Excel tool per week and article
  2. Flat file is loaded into B2Wise tool to recalculate stock buffers of RM and WIP
  3. Output is passed to Production planner to inform them on new buffer targets

- 🚀 From July 2020 onwards, B2Wise will also be used for Finished Goods buffers

### Data/ IT

- Tools in use: SAP, B2Wise, own Excel templates

- Data Warehouse is capturing all SAP + local data -> suggestion to integrate with Flowlity from there

- Article database