About Royal A-ware
Royal A-ware is a leading player in the dairy industry, managing the entire supply chain from cow to consumer. The company specializes in valorising milk for the production of cheese, whey, cream, and other dairy products, serving B2B, wholesale and retail customers. Over the past decade, Royal A-ware has grown significantly, merging with the Bouter Group and Anker Kaas, building its own cheese factory, and acquiring multiple facilities in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, and Estonia. This expansion introduced new complexities to their supply chain.
The challenge
Royal A-ware’s Cheese Business Unit (BU) was managing its supply chain planning entirely in disconnected Excel files. While the business grew and the complexity of the supply chain increased, this approach quickly became unsustainable. Key challenges included:
- Inefficiency: The Excel-based planning relied heavily on manual work, making it time-consuming and error-prone.
- Lack of visibility: Planners struggled to perform root cause analyses or gain a clear view of risks, as data was fragmented and inconsistent.
- Knowledge dependency: Much of the planning knowledge resided in the minds of a few individuals, creating challenges for task handovers and a high risk of knowledge loss when people left the organization.
- Demand-supply balancing complexity: Balancing demand and supply involved managing long production and ripening lead times, responding to specific customer needs, optimizing warehouse space, and planning production efficiently.
The lack of control over these processes stood in the way of effective decision-making and planning transparency. When Royal A-ware’s finance team implemented Anaplan for their processes, they recommended EyeOn’s expertise in supply chain planning for the food industry to address these challenges.
The project
Royal A-ware partnered with EyeOn for the development of an APS design and implementation of a robust planning solution using Anaplan. Anaplan was chosen for its flexibility, which allowed for customization to meet the unique needs of the cheese supply chain.
Typically, the solution design and implementation phase is the most significant phase of the overall digital transformation in terms of time and effort. EyeOn supported Royal A-ware with translating the business processes, data, and integration requirements into a complete APS solution design, developing and configuring the applied functionality and system integration setup, integrally testing the solution, and preparing the organization for the go-live of the new solution.
The project was executed in two phases:
- Phase 1: Tactical planning processes (6 months)
Focused on contract management, cheese ripening planning, master production planning, and warehouse capacity planning. - Phase 2: Operational processes (3 months)
- Focused on day-to-day warehouse occupation management and order allocation.
- Implemented the Anaplan Optimizer to match inventory lots to sales orders based on multiple criteria, such as cheese type, age, quality and location.
Throughout both phases, EyeOn worked closely with Royal A-ware’s Supply Chain Manager, Jeroen van der Laan to ensure a seamless integration of the solution into their planning workflows.
Results
The project delivered transformative results for Royal A-ware:
- Efficiency and automation: The implementation significantly reduced manual workload, enabling planners to focus on higher-value tasks.
- End-to-end visibility: With a single source of truth, the team is now able to identify risks, analyze root causes, and make informed decisions.
- Optimized planning: The Anaplan optimizer improved demand allocation, ensuring alignment between production and customer needs.
- Knowledge retention: Processes became less dependent on individual planners, reducing the risk of knowledge loss and simplifying task handovers.
In addition, the project led to a mindset shift within the organization. By consciously re-evaluating planning processes, the team developed a stronger focus on key planning horizons, laying the foundation for further improvements, including improved demand planning.
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