Demand-driven SCM in the process industry

Many companies in the process industry are convinced by the concepts of Demand-driven Supply Chain Management. However, when it comes to implementation, they often face the challenge of applying the theory to the complexity of their supply chain.

This includes numerous constraints that typically need to be considered when looking to increase plant availability and improve overall plant efficiency.

If anything, most companies start with only small DDMRP pilots in the distribution. In the absence of system support, complex Excel tools are used. This in turn makes it difficult to impossible to transfer the benefits achieved to the organization as a whole. The scalability of this add-on is doubted accordingly.

Lean Planning

With the SAP-based Camelot Demand-driven Lean Planning Suite (CLS), a completely integrated solution is available that supports especially companies in the process industry with these challenges.

The Camelot Demand-driven Lean Planning Suite is available on S/4, SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) and SAP SCM. In addition to Demand-driven MRP (DDMRP), the software suite also includes Demand-driven Rhythm Wheel Planning (DDRWP), i.e. the concept for smoothed production flow planning, which is considered best practice in the process industry.

DDMRP (available on S/4, SAP IBP and SAP SCM) reduces supply and demand variability by using inventory in the system as a buffer and replenishing it based on actual consumption rather than forecasted demand.

Production then runs according to the repetitive cyclical production approach of DDRWP (available on S/4 and SAP SCM). In this way, production is leveled, demand fluctuations at the upstream stage (required components) are reduced, and visibility and reliability of supply signals are increased.

Here, production constraints such as lot sizes, campaigns and an optimal sequence are taken into account. With the Demand-driven Lean Planning Suite, Camelot offers the process industry in particular a holistic and integrated solution package and thus supports the introduction of a demand-driven operating model. The suite is also available as a cloud solution.

Bottlenecks

The integration of DDMRP and DDRWP in Camelot Demand-driven Lean Planning Suite has the following advantages, among others: During design or parameterization, DDRWP parameters such as cycle times, production quantities and campaign frequency are used to automatically determine the level of DDMRP inventory buffers and align them with production constraints and lead times.

During production planning, projected inventory buffers are calculated based on the current demand situation and can be taken into account to set alerts and/or prioritization for automatic resolution of bottleneck situations.