Business and Inventory Challenges

Forecasting demand in the specialty chemical industry is difficult yet at the same time critical to planning inventory. It all starts with the customers. Retail customers demand extremely high service levels and consistent performance. Industrial customers have large, erratic consumption patterns, and expect stock to be available whenever they need it either on your site or at theirs. At the same time sales and marketing teams are constantly shaping the demand with promotions. They introduce new products, without killing off the old ones.

Production adds constraints to the problem. If the plant is continuous, they need long runs to reduce changeover cost and cross-contamination. If it is batch, then everything has to be produced as a multiple of the batch.

Finally there are the raw materials. Feed stocks commodities are often highly vulnerable to fluctuations in the market price. Minor components can have long lead times. Getting the ordering right can make the difference between making a profit or not making anything at all.

ToolsGroup's Unique Capabilities

In this environment, ToolsGroup can help you improve the forecast and, when the forecast is as good as it can be, optimize the deployment of the inventory - get it in the right place in the right quantity at the right time - to buffer against the things that could not have been foreseen.

We deliver improved short-term forecast accuracy, which is critical to achieving very high levels of service. ToolsGroup customers in this industry are already obtaining 99+% service levels in certain categories.

ToolsGroup solutions also address many of the specific needs of specialty chemical companies such as handling:

• Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI)
• Complex multi-echelon network models
• Transportation constraints such as minimum shipment order quantities
• Rough cut capacity planning constraints such as run length and batch size

Successes

ToolsGroup is successfully deployed at more than 30 implementations at more than 10 specialty chemical and lubricants customers, such as:

• BP and BP-Castrol
• Repsol
• ITW (Krafft)
• TFL
• And many others

For a complete list of customers and our unique capabilities for the specialty chemical industry, please contact the ToolsGroup office nearest you.