February 14, 2022

Integrated logistics planning on a telco retailer

Generating a fully customized decision support system.

Integrated logistics planning on a telco retailer

At a glance

Challenge

A large convergent telco merged two separate supply chains into a unified system. With over 200 flow types, the challenge was to integrate processes across procurement, marketing, production, and logistics to capture synergies, reduce inventory costs, and enhance equipment reuse, all while ensuring high customer service levels.

Solution

An holistic framework integrated decision levels and business areas into a unified workflow using a decision support system for demand planning, purchasing, production, and reverse logistics. This model combines predictive and prescriptive analytics, balancing short-term production and reverse logistics with long-term procurement lead times.

Results

The project delivered a fully customized decision support system (DSS) with a user-friendly interface and comprehensive alerts, ensuring data integrity. The DSS enables quick scenario exploration, reducing planning expenses by approximately 50%. Robust plans lead to a ~10% reduction in stock coverage and a ~10% increase in equipment re-usage rates.

Challenge

A large convergent telco merged two separate supply chains into a unified system. With over 200 flow types, the challenge was to integrate processes across procurement, marketing, production, and logistics to capture synergies, reduce inventory costs, and enhance equipment reuse, all while ensuring high customer service levels.

Approach

Solution

An holistic framework integrated decision levels and business areas into a unified workflow using a decision support system for demand planning, purchasing, production, and reverse logistics. This model combines predictive and prescriptive analytics, balancing short-term production and reverse logistics with long-term procurement lead times.

Results

The project delivered a fully customized decision support system (DSS) with a user-friendly interface and comprehensive alerts, ensuring data integrity. The DSS enables quick scenario exploration, reducing planning expenses by approximately 50%. Robust plans lead to a ~10% reduction in stock coverage and a ~10% increase in equipment re-usage rates.

Our
AI-generated
summary

Our AI-generated summary

Our AI-generated summary

A large convergent telco, originated from a recent merger of fixed and mobile providers, faced the need to redesign and unify two separate multi-echelon supply chains. The interdependency between various planning levels (procurement, marketing and production) made process integration critical. A robust decision support system was required to tackle this complex environment, characterized by demand uncertainty, fluctuating marketing strategies, powerful suppliers and intricate direct and reverse logistics, with over 200 simultaneous flow types.

The goal was to capture operational synergies, reduce inventory costs and increase the reuse of refurbished equipment, while maintaining superior customer service.

An holistic framework was conceived to connect the multiple decision levels and distinct business areas into a single workflow. This unified planning model was materialized with a decision support system for demand planning, purchasing, production and reverse logistics.

The model leverages both predictive and prescriptive analytics. Upstream, a new forecasting methodology combines historical data with marketing sensibilities.

Demand estimations are then a key input for a state-of-the-art stock management approach, designed to meet desired service levels while dealing with multiple time horizons: production and reverse logistics plans are created on a weekly basis, while procurement lead times require a long-term vision.

The project has ultimately generated a fully customized decision support system (DSS). With a user-friendly interface and comprehensive alerts that ensure data integrity, the DSS is a robust reliable tool.

Our AI-generated summary

Our AI-generated summary

Short processing times allow for exploring multiple scenarios, while decreasing planning expenses by ~50%. Robust plans induce a reduction of ~10% in stock coverage and an increase of ~10% in equipment re-usage rates.

Read more

Read more