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Integrated DRP Tool Aids Sportcraft in Order Planning & Fulfillment
For some companies, demand planning requires complicated spreadsheets, hours of manual number crunching, the painful use of 3rd party add-on tools, and the business intelligence of a few key employees. Other companies, like Sportcraft, have automated the process with demand planning tools from Apprise Software that save time while increasing distribution resource planning (DRP) accuracy and efficiency.
For Sportcraft, manufacturer and distributor of indoor and outdoor recreational products, manual number crunching has given way to more efficient processes that integrate sales history, pending orders, like product sales, customer forecasts, inventory lead times and other metrics. Now, authorized users throughout the company have access to improved business intelligence that allows for faster response times to changing market conditions.
"Our customers live in a complex, fast changing world," said Jeff Broadhurst, president, Apprise Software. "Having a totally integrated tool that can react instantly to information coming from any point in their supply chain is critical to their profitability."
At Sportcraft, staying ahead of demand helps the $200mm company maintain high satisfaction rates with its mass merchant trading partners. But collaborative forecasts aren't always available or accurate. A forecast hold feature within Apprise® Distribution helps the company maintain inventory equilibrium by flagging customer orders received without a corresponding forecast. Sales orders that don't match or are missing a forecast are flagged and held in the system for attention. This way, inventory designated for another customer remains protected and can ship as promised.
Since 2005, Sportcraft has used Apprise Software's DRP functionality to access real-time business data for a better view of demand. The move from manual DRP to an automated system has produced good results for the Mt. Olive, New Jersey-based company.
"We started out using a manual DRP process," said Jim Neitzel, CIO, Sportcraft. "Our implementation of Apprise Distribution gave us automated DRP, and subsequently changed the way we look at orders and order our products."
The reliability of the Apprise Distribution system allowed the company to move its purchasing functions to Asia where employees can act on system data, rather than compile and analyze numbers on their own. The Asia-based employees also handle shipping and container management functions in the same time zone as their manufacturing and logistics partners. Apprise Software's global support in North America and Asia gives the company same time zone, native language support services that are helping the company further improve efficiencies in its Shenzhen-based office.
"DRP takes business intelligence that normally resides in an analyst's head and commits it to the system," continued Neitzel. "We now have better control over our inventory, particularly with our major customers."
For Sportcraft, assessing true demand starts with real-time numbers in the Apprise Distribution system. Employees then run the values through a "reasonability" test to check numbers against established business rules. When the system says to order 74 foosball tables, the company will actually order 200 tables based on order minimum commitments with its manufacturing partners.
"We learned some important lessons during implementation. Among them was our need to maintain high institutional discipline to ensure PO's, sales orders, active and inactive items and lead times were accurate and up-to-date. DRP accuracy flows down from that data," said Neitzel.
Today, the institutional discipline required to keep Sportcraft's DRP system accurate and up-to-date has also improved interdepartmental communication. Now, marketing and operational departments work together to share critical business information.Sportcraft uses Apprise Distribution to quickly gauge true demand through actual, forecasted and historic sales numbers. When lead times, pending orders and other data are added to the system, DRP intelligence drills even deeper.
"I'm a fan," said Neitzel. "Apprise Distribution's DRP has been a very useful tool for us."
Sportcraft, established in 1926, is an industry leader in recreational products that offer quality and innovation. For more information visit www.sportcraft.com.
