Tactical and strategic industrial footprint optimization

animal feedAbout the company

Our customer is a global company in animal nutrition that has multiple factories and serves various markets with a wide range of products for different applications. The market is evolving rapidly. Their IBP process demands for fact-based decision-making based on scenario analysis.

 

The challenge

The dynamics of the market our customer operates in, ask for scenario thinking, the time windows for decision-making preparation are short and limit the possibilities. Typical scenarios include:

  • How to supply if demand in a certain market makes a step change
  • How to handle the impact of upcoming legislation limiting feasibility of supply sources
  • How and where to extend capacity to deal with sales growth
  • How to mitigate supply risk (risk resilience)
  • Open/close decisions of production lines and plants

 

The project

We offered a structured approach to building a decision support model:

  • Understanding the supply network and planning logic
  • Agile modeling to translate a business problem into mathematics
  • Model validation and calibration
  • Embedding the functionality in a cloud-based application that enables running a pre-defined set of possible scenarios
  • Furthermore, we offered supporting workshops to model/develop scenarios for strategic open/close decisions.

 

Results

  • Fast and accurate what-if analysis with the help of mathematical models
  • Gaining insights by understanding, decomposing problems, and understanding the relevant factors
  • Agile modeling helps to objectify making trade-offs
  • Decisions for the future footprint are taken; implementation projects started.

 

Demo video of the app we created:

 

Ready to bring your IBP process to the next level?

Get in touch with us to learn how our specialists can help you build a decision support model that provides you with the necessary insights to understand, decompose, and effectively solve problems.

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