James Cooke is a principal analyst with Nucleus Research in Boston, covering supply chain planning software. He was previously the editor of CSCMP?s Supply Chain Quarterly and a staff writer for DC Velocity.
Before embarking on a string of acquisitions in the late '90s, Church & Dwight Co. Inc. took stock of its operations to figure out what it would need to support that growth. The review revealed that the company, which is perhaps best known for its Arm & Hammer baking soda and cleaning products, would have to upgrade its supply chain software. Soon after, it began replacing its in-house programs with a suite of applications designed to manage what would soon be an expanding array of consumer products.
Among the half-dozen applications it licensed was a powerful, top-of-the-line demand forecasting solution. To obtain the kind of forecasts it considered essential to good production planning and inventory management, the company invested in sophisticated software that was capable of analyzing three years' worth of customer orders and, based on its analysis, create demand forecasts 18 months out for key clients in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Company executives were confident they had the right software tools for the job. Yet over time, it became apparent that the employees tasked with forecasting weren't using the application bought for that purpose. Among other problems, this created extra work for the staffers who used the forecasts to set manufacturing requirements and schedule plant production.
After evaluating the situation, the executives concluded that the problem lay not in the tools, but in the company's organizational setup. To fix things, they would have to reshuffle the organization and realign reporting responsibilities. And they would no longer leave the choice of forecasting tools to the users' discretion. Instead, they would create a team of specialists and make it their job to learn the ins and outs of the forecasting application and see that it was used to its full potential.
Tools for growth
Founded in 1846, the Princeton, N.J.-based Church & Dwight makes household, personal care, and specialty products under the Arm & Hammer name as well as other well-known brands like Brillo, Arrid, and Pepsodent. Its annual revenues total about $2.4 billion.
For nearly 160 years, Church & Dwight concentrated on selling products within the United States and Canada. But that changed in 2000, when the company began a series of acquisitions that have continued up through this year. Through those acquisitions, the company has expanded globally, entering markets in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
To meet worldwide demand for its products, the company operates nine plants in the United States and two overseas. It also uses about 40 contract manufacturers. Finished goods are kept in four primary distribution centers in the United States, each of which serves a specific region of the country. Outside the United States, Church & Dwight has distribution centers in Mexico, Canada, England, France, Australia, and China.
To get a better handle on its burgeoning supply chain operation, in the late 1990s, the company began replacing its in-house systems with a host of software applications from Manugistics, now owned by JDA Software Group Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz. "We wanted tools that could support standardized procedures so we could grow," says Steve Barrow, the company's supply chain manager.
Today, Church & Dwight uses a variety of JDA software applications to manage functions ranging from transportation planning and inventory management to freight auditing and payment. On the forecasting and planning side of its operation, the company uses JDA Demand and JDA Fulfillment. JDA Demand, which is the application that set the reorganization in motion, creates sales forecasts based on historical order data it pulls from Church & Dwight's SAP system. JDA Fulfillment, an inventory optimization tool, takes the forecast data and calculates what the plants need to manufacture and where to ship the finished products. Church & Dwight also uses the application to schedule manufacturing operations at its own plants and to determine what to order from its contract manufacturers.
Organizational shake-up
Up until 18 months ago, responsibility for creating the demand forecasts lay with the Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) department, which reported to the sales division. Although the group had access to the JDA Demand software, it wasn't using the tool to develop its forecasts, preferring to use a system of its own devising.
That made life difficult for the supply chain planners who used the S&OP group's forecasts to set manufacturing requirements and schedule plant production. The planners were already using several other JDA applications in their work, and it created an extra step for them when they received data in a format that wasn't readily usable by those programs. In some cases, they would end up loading the S&OP forecast into the JDA Fulfillment tool they were using to set manufacturing requirements; in others, they would simply take the data and create their own forecasts using the JDA Demand tool. Either way, it represented an added burden for a staff that was already carrying a full load.
To fix the problem, the company decided to move the S&OP group out of sales and change its job description. From that point forward, the group's primary role would be to use JDA Demand to create forecasts. In effect, the staffers would become master craftsmen who would develop expertise in the software. That would free up the supply chain planners to concentrate on production requirements and plant scheduling. It would also, the company hoped, lead to more accurate demand forecasts, which would, in turn, lead to more efficient production plans.
Better forecasts
In May 2007, the S&OP department was shifted to the supply chain organization and renamed the demand planning department. "Now we have a department that can put 100 percent of its time into forecasting," says Shara Fash, Church & Dwight's supply chain optimization manager, who heads up the four-person department.
Along with developing expertise in the specific software, the demand planning department also works to develop cross-functional relationships with the marketing, sales, and supply chain departments. That cross-functional communication, Fash says, enables the planners to "find out what's happening with customers and make sure that the forecasts reflect what's going on in the marketplace."
As for how it's all working out, the reports to date are positive. Since the change, the group has taken forecast accuracy to a whole new level, according to Fash. "In the last year," she reports, "we went from 60 to 80 percent forecast accuracy because of the creation of this department."
A team from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, walked away with top honors at this year’s event. It was the school’s first time competing in the scholarship competition, which was held during IANA’s Intermodal Expo in September.
The winning squad included students Jaren Bussell, Elizabeth Shuler, Brock Sooley, and Kathryn Whittaker and was coached by Dr. Donald Maier, associate professor of practice–supply chain. “It is exciting to see what the students can achieve in five hours. Each team reads, analyzes, and prepares a presentation with no faculty input,” Maier said in a release.
In addition to UT, participating schools included the California State Maritime Academy, College of Charleston, Georgia Southern University, and SUNY Maritime as well as the universities of Arkansas, Maryland, North Florida, North Texas, and Wisconsin at Superior.
IANA’s scholarship awards support curriculums designed to attract students to careers in freight and intermodal transportation. Since the program’s inception in 2007, IANA has awarded over $5.3 million in scholarships.
Family-owned business Cibao Meat Products, a producer of Hispanic-style sausages and deli meats, has long prided itself on staying true to the traditions and values the company was founded on in 1969—like a commitment to high-quality ingredients and a family workplace atmosphere. Less of a source of pride, however, was its continuing reliance on the same, mostly manual, processes and data management techniques used at its inception.
With the company now selling its meats to retail giants such as BJ’s, Sam’s Club, and Costco as well as 500 supermarkets and restaurants across the U.S., Cibao president Heinz Vieluf Jr. knew that it was time to take the company into the digital age. “As a third-generation leader of a multigenerational company, I put an emphasis on bringing our business into the digital future and utilizing technologies that will help propel success,” he said in a statement.
IN WITH THE NEW
In Cibao’s case, that would require modernizing its data-collection practices. Because the meat producer still relied on legacy processes, its company data and customer data were siloed, scattered throughout departments from sales to manufacturing to accounting. Teams were manually gathering information and creating reports on a weekly or biweekly basis. As a result, company leaders had no real-time visibility into business-critical operations. On top of that, creating those reports ate up hours of team members’ time each week.
For help bringing all of its organizational data into one central location, Cibao turned to the Slingshot work management platform from software company Infragistics. In October 2023, the company began working with Slingshot to compile data from multiple sources into a centralized hub that would be accessible to every employee.
Today, with the new platform in place, Cibao is benefiting from enhanced data transparency across the company and from accelerated data-reporting capabilities. Employees can now create reports within minutes, eliminating the biweekly reports in favor of daily assessments and unlocking insights needed to make critical decisions 10 times faster than before—saving 120 hours a month, the company says. For example, now that it has real-time access to its customer payment data, Cibao’s accounts receivable team has been able to detect any discrepancies in real time. This has allowed the team to check in with customers as soon as they notice a potential issue, which has increased the company’s cash flow by $40,000 a week on average, or up to 65%.
STRENGTHENING THE BOTTOM LINE
With teams saving hours each week on reporting, Cibao employees can now concentrate on higher-value tasks. For instance, they have more time to connect one-on-one with clients and develop relationships, instead of getting held up on the back end. They can also focus on new marketing efforts and promotions, not only boosting customer satisfaction but also helping to grow existing customer relationships and develop new ones.
“We created Slingshot to bring together data that has traditionally been spread across departments into one completely accessible space so that companies can better drive productivity, insights, and ultimately business results,” said Dean Guida, founder of Slingshot, in the statement. “By bringing its data into a central location, Cibao Meat Products has unlocked insights that have allowed [it] to move strategically and at a faster pace, strengthening the company’s bottom line.”
As autonomous systems take on a bigger role in logistics and industrial production applications, the race is on to make the equipment smarter, more efficient, and safer. To accelerate work in this area, the German lift truck and logistics technology vendor Kion Group is partnering with a local university to support expanded studies on artificial intelligence (AI) and autonomous systems.
According to Kion, Peitz’s work will focus on the development of autonomous systems that operate intelligently and safely for all parties involved, with a particular focus on autonomous mobile robots, forklift trucks, and AI-based systems that are used in logistics and production environments.
The objective of the endowed professorship is to advance the field of research at the highest international level, Kion said in a statement. In close collaboration with research networks and other partners both within and outside TU Dortmund University, such as the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML and the Kion Group itself, the professorship will form a “hub” for digital and intelligent logistics, the company added.
American skin-care company ET Browne—best known for its Palmer’s Cocoa Butter—has trimmed costs, boosted revenue, and increased profits thanks to a recent IT upgrade from its longtime technology partner Syspro, a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider that specializes in serving manufacturing and distribution businesses. ET Browne has run on Syspro software for 25 years and racked up some of its biggest year-over-year improvements following a 2023 upgrade to the latest version of Syspro ERP—an enhancement that allowed it to leverage the platform’s material requirements and planning (MRP) capabilities to build a just-in-time inventory system.
The net result? A smoother-running supply chain.
“We’ve successfully relied on [Syspro] for more than a quarter century while both growing and aligning our business to take advantage of the [platform’s] enhancements,” Pieter Goes, ET Browne’s vice president of IT & BI (business intelligence), said in a statement describing the project. “After bringing in [Syspro] to do native demand forecasts, we were able to better evaluate key markets and key customers, enabling our forecasting and capacity planning to be much more accurate. As a result, we can achieve a fill rate of greater than 95% and are able to process our purchase orders much sooner, resulting in better supply.”
NEW CAPABILITIES, BETTER OUTCOMES
Syspro’s MRP capabilities allow companies to balance supply and demand for materials and components so they can accelerate manufacturing production. With the system upgrade, ET Browne was able to take advantage of those capabilities to gain better visibility and control over inventory and the supply chain. As the companies explain, this allowed ET Browne to predict demand, understand how filling the projected sales pipeline would affect production schedules, and anticipate the peaks in demand it would need to buffer.
Leveraging those demand forecasting and supply chain management capabilities, ET Browne created a just-in-time inventory system that has dramatically reduced the amount of raw material and product it keeps on hand—a move that is translating into increased profits: Since implementing the upgrade, ET Browne has reduced inventory by 22% and increased profits 113% on 7% revenue growth.
ET Browne’s leaders say they intend to leverage Syspro to manage emerging challenges as well. Those include meeting growing consumer, distributor, and government demands to use recycled materials in packaging, while also making sure the company first uses up the materials it already has on hand. That transition will increase complexity within the company’s bill of materials, something Syspro’s management capabilities can help it navigate.
“[Syspro] ERP provides much more than just financial management,” Brian Rainboth, CEO of Syspro Americas, said in the statement. “Our platform empowers mid-market manufacturers to create accurate demand forecasts [and] project exactly how much raw material they’ll need to order and how much product they need to make to meet demand. We’re proud to celebrate 25 years with ET Browne and look forward to enabling future growth and profitability as the company deploys additional capabilities with [our] platform.”
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Illustration courtesy of Clean Energy Fuels Corporation
For consumers, the car-buying process generally includes a test drive so they can see if the vehicle lives up to its hype before they plunk down any money. But the process can be a little more difficult for commercial fleet managers.
The 2025 Peterbilt 579 day cab tractor, branded in Clean Energy’s signature green, will be available for fleets to test on their normal routes for up to two weeks. And if you don’t happen to have an RNG fueling station in your own yard, that’s no problem: The fleets testing the demo truck will be able to use Clean Energy’s fueling infrastructure, which consists of over 600 stations across North America, 200 of which have public tractor-trailer access.
First in line to try the new rig—which can haul heavy loads for an 800-mile range—is transportation and logistics giant J.B. Hunt Transport Inc. After Hunt completes its trial, the truck will make its way through large and medium-sized heavy-duty trucking companies in California, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Clean Energy says it expects to run the X15N demo truck program at least through 2025.
“Vehicles powered by renewable natural gas produce significantly less carbon emissions throughout their lifecycle and are more compatible with today’s available infrastructure than most competing emissions-reduction technologies,” Greer Woodruff, executive vice president of safety, sustainability, and maintenance at J.B. Hunt, said in a release. “The new technology and supporting fuel network in this pilot have the potential to be a viable, cost-effective solution for customers wanting to decrease their carbon footprint in the near term.”