Revolutionizing Inventory Management in Marine Electronics with IoT

The customer is a specialist marine electronics company that provides navigation, marine instruments, and fish finding equipment to both the recreational and commercial marine sectors. The company was struggling with siloed processes, lack of end-to-end visibility, and inefficient inventory management. They were unable to respond effectively to changing market dynamics and frequently experienced both inventory excess and shortages. The company's demand forecasting, especially for new product introductions, was also inaccurate.

The marine electronics company, a specialist in providing navigation, marine instruments, and fish finding equipment to both the recreational and commercial marine sectors, was facing significant challenges in its supply chain management. The company was unable to integrate commercial, supply, and demand planning due to many siloed processes, leading to lost sales and excess inventory. The lack of end-to-end (E2E) visibility and the inability to respond to changing market dynamics further exacerbated the situation. The company was unable to create true E2E visibility across the supply chain due to a variety of disconnected planning systems operating in a siloed environment. Additionally, the company frequently experienced both inventory excess and shortages, with only 10% of the SKUs having healthy inventory across the network. The forecast accuracy for demand, especially in connection to new product introduction, was rather low.

The company partnered with o9 to leverage their highly differentiated Enterprise Knowledge Graph to integrate various planning functions and regions across the organization. This reduced overall E2E planning cycles and increased visibility and efficiency. The company improved its inventory management significantly by implementing statistical and supply-based safety stock calculations with o9. Supply planning was streamlined across its distribution network, including the creation of purchase orders and transfer orders. The company’s demand forecasting capability increased significantly through the implementation of rule-based demand forecasting depending on the product type. There were further improvements in the highly collaborative consensus forecast process across functions and regions. Leveraging o9’s digital planning and decision-making platform, the company was able to improve forecast accuracy, inventory health, and planner productivity through the implementation of a best-in-class integrated demand and supply planning solution. In addition, o9’s Control Tower implemented at the company provides tracking of key operational KPIs as well as providing tactical execution recommendations in the short term thereby improving customer OTIFs.

• The implementation of o9’s digital planning and decision-making platform revolutionized the company's operations. The company now enjoys improved forecast accuracy, healthier inventory, and increased planner productivity. The platform also enabled the company to track key operational KPIs and provided tactical execution recommendations in the short term, thereby improving customer OTIFs. The company was able to replace outdated systems like Excel, PowerPoint, and Avercast with a more efficient and integrated solution. The ability to perform real-time scenario analysis and make informed decisions has significantly improved the company's operational efficiency and responsiveness to market dynamics.

• Revenue increase through improved forecast accuracy
• Customer OTIF increase through improved inventory and distribution
• Productivity improvement through process automation