Client Need

A Telecommunications organisation was looking for a solution to better manage their inventory for networking equipment.  This involved wanting greater visibility over the supply and demand planning processes and a market leading innovative solution that uses advanced AI techniques to enable quicker responses by their teams when inventory is in danger of outage in the normal course of the day or due to adverse events like fires or floods.

Our Solution

Archisage, worked in partnership with IBM, to deliver a first of a kind solution built on top of IBM Supply Chain Insights.  The solution enabled the customer's team to visually see the state of their inventory across the country.  They could see which inventory was out of stock; which was reaching critical levels and was in danger of getting to out of stock.   The users could focus on the highest priority items without searching for that information.  

From there, the users could drill down and view a complete time phases inventory view for an item.  This showed them how the inventory position would be changing over time.  Models were created to enable the system to then make recommendations to the users in terms of what actions they could take; whether it be to order more items from the vendor; or transfer items from another location.  The user was provided full information in terms of the cost of each option and the associated expected delivery times.  

Finally, using data from the IBM Weather Channel; a model was also implemented that identified inventory items that were at risk of being impacted by events like fires or floods across the country.  This would enable the customer's team to proactive action by ensuring that sufficient supply of material can be made ready to be deployed to a danger spot if required.

The Benefits

Crawl - Visibility

Through the customized dashboards and KPIs about inventory levels; the customer was able to get a snapshot view of their complete inventory position across the country and at each distribution centre.  This brought into focus the most important issues of the day for the customer.  They could clearly identify which items needed focus on today vs which items could be left to a later time.

Walk - Actionable Insights

With information of upcoming supply and demand for each inventory item across the country; the user was able to see historical as well as forecasted inventory positions using a Time Phased Inventory View.  This information enabled the users to make decisions on how certain scenarios; whether it is a stock out or a stock underage or stock overage can be handled.  The recommendation module supported and aided the decision making by calculating possible options and their costs and presenting that to the user in an easy to understand method; thereby saving significant time and effort.

The use of the Weather Channel to provide up to date weather information across the country and help identify locations and inventory that could be impacted; enabled the planning team to be prepared and proactive.  They could better plan and have strategies in place before a request for more materials came from the people on the ground in the impacted areas.

Run - Smarter Workflows

The solution enabled the customer to also keep track of each identified issue through work queues.  The status and resolution progress was captured enabling the teams to know what steps have already been taken and what steps are still to be taken.  Tasks could be marked as complete with a certain timeframe (for eg:  new stock ordered from vendors - expected to arrive in 10 days).  After that period of time; the inventory would be checked again and if not resolved; would be re-raised for assessment by the customers users.  This ensured that any resolution was tracked till the data showed it was resolved and not just till actions taken.