What makes Streamline stand out among competing solutions
Syncing ordering dates across SKUs
What do you do if your Min/Max replenishment strategy built-in into the ERP system throws a purchasing signal for one SKU but other SKUs of the same supplier do not need replenishment yet? Min/Max ordering signals come per item while businesses issue purchase orders per supplier. So you either ignore the alert and will have a shortage later, or purchase a full container excessively. As opposed to ERP methods, Streamline raises purchasing signals per supplier. Streamline predicts all purchasing signals during the next order cycle via a discrete-event simulation and purchases beforehand to have a smooth purchasing process with constant order cycle, or purchasing full containers (order cycle is variable), or EOQ.
Replacing formulas with Discrete-event simulation
Inventory replenishment is based on calculating future inventory levels during the next lead time and sometimes beyond that. That means your formula needs to account for numerous upcoming consumption and replenishment events. Sometimes it’s doable, but once you start dealing with event schedules like a shipment schedule, or multiple orders in transit Excel gives up almost immediately.
While our competitors usually simplify calculations without colliding events realistically, Streamline creates a timeline with one-day precision and puts all schedules onto the timeline. Then Streamline executes the event sequence giving us the most accurate information about the company’s inventory levels with one-day precision. Sometimes it’s just a more accurate method compared to replenishment formulas, but in many cases, it’s the only way to accommodate for the real-world supply chain complexity.
Using AI to forecast demand
Estimating seasonality, price elasticity, or top-down forecasting is not enough nowadays. Market changes very dynamically and it’s hard to predict if your history of sales is yet relevant enough to the current situation and can be used to extrapolate into the future. That’s an area where we use our proprietary AI so we only apply time series forecasting techniques, predictors, and level changes if AI says it’s appropriate to apply – just like if you are keeping an eye on every SKU every day.
Group EOQ
Are you using EOQ in your work? If not, it is worth giving EOQ a closer look as this inventory planning concept significantly reduces your holding and ordering costs. Unfortunately, classic EOQ is calculated per SKU and not a group of SKUs. In a real-world supply chain, purchase orders contain more than one SKU, if not hundreds of SKUs. While Streamline supports classic EOQ calculation, it also offers group EOQ that goes far beyond the classic approach making EOQ applicable to orders that include multiple SKUs.
That becomes possible thanks to the ability of Streamline to sync the order date for a group of items. Then Streamline just moves the barrier of synchronization back and forth to find the best order cycle for the group of SKUs and automatically minimizes the combination of holding and ordering costs.
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Further Reading:
- How to deal with supply chain processes during the Coronavirus outbreak
- Why switch from Excel to inventory planning software
- Must-read: Smart Supply Chain Management solutions for business processes optimization
- Cross-Functional Alignment in Supply Chain Planning: A Case Study of Sales and Operations Planning [PDF]
- Demand & Supply Management: Collaborative Planning, Forecasting & Replenishment
Too much manual work in Excel?
See what Streamline can do for you
- 99+% inventory availability.
- Up to 99% forecast accuracy.
- Up to 98% reduction in stockouts.
- Up to 50% reduction in excess inventory.
- 1-5 percentage points margin improvement.
- Up to 56X ROI in one year. 100% ROI in the first 3 months.
- Up to 90% reduction in time spent on forecasting, planning, and ordering.
