Infographic: Manufacturing Success: How ToolsGroup Customers Excel

With Service Optimizer 99+ (SO99+) ToolsGroup’s manufacturing customers commonly achieve a 10-30% reduction in inventory, improve product availability to 96% or better, and reduce overhead (such as overtime and expedited freight) by 50%. Read this infographic to learn how they do it.

  Amid escalating demand variability, SKU proliferation, pressure from competitors, product obsolescence and capacity constraints, ToolsGroup’s service-driven supply chain planning is a manufacturer’s best ally for meeting service commitments while reducing inventory.   Aston Martin, manufacturer of luxury sports cars and grand tourers, faced a challenge due to an increasingly international client base. At the same time, its board raised targets for first-time availability (FTA) by 2%, without increasing inventory.

• Reduced inventory value of safety stock on clustered items by 18%
• Immediately improved FTA service levels to 97.1%

  Polaris is a world leader in the powersports automotive industry. Its supply chain is full speed ahead with automated planning:

• Reduced inventory by 15%
• Boosted service levels by 10 percentage points

“Now we can focus on more added-value work because the data crunching doesn’t consume any time on our end. It’s a good interaction between humans and machines. We let the machines do the dirty job, the one where humans don’t add value and actually sometimes get things wrong.” – Ilaria Maruccia, EMEA WG&PGA SIOP Manager, Polaris   Mitsubishi Electric Europe sought to reduce inventory while improving service levels, in spite of the complexities of a highly seasonal business that revolves around urgent repairs.

• Reduced spare parts stock by 30%
• Increased service level from 87% to 97%, even during seasonal demand peaks

  Höganäs is the world’s leading producer of iron and metal powders for automotive components, brazing, electrical motors, additive manufacturing and water treatment.

• Reporting sped up by 50%
• Forecast errors halved
• Enhanced foundation for decision making (S&OP)

“We went for a large global roll-out right from the outset rather than tackling it in small pieces. This was possible because the system was easy to learn and we didn’t need to make local changes to it. Salespeople from all the different markets took part in the implementation so now they are brought into it and fully trained.” -Ralf Carlstrom, General Manager, Höganäs  

ToolsGroup’s manufacturing customers commonly achieve:

• 10-30% reduction in inventory
• 96% or better product availability
• 50% reduction in overhead (such as overtime and expedited freight)