Client Overview
HSIL Limited, vastly recognised by its brand (Hindware), a leading name in the Indian market is a company driven by innovation. Its complete focus on crafting unforgettable bathing experiences, developing contemporary bathroom solutions for over five decades with products that make life better has set new trends each year. The unequivocal trait of HSIL, being the very best and first, in its domain began with the introduction of vitreous china sanitary ware to the Indian consumer in 1962 and it was just the beginning searching for new approaches and ideas in bathroom product design led to the birth of brand hindware. Its growing portfolio of excellent brands Hindware Italian Collection, Hindware Art along with Hindware encompasses pristine ceramic bathroom fixtures Water closets, Bidets, Washbasins, and Urinals, series of tech-smart taps Faucets, tiles, vents, wellness and kitchen appliances is a testament of its growth and commitment.
Planvisage Solution
The implementation of Planvisage Demand Forecasting and Replenishment Planning solution started in mid-2013 for both Trade and Project division in Hyderabad. The solution was integrated with Hindware SAP ERP. Main objective of the solution was to improve forecasting and also to have effective inventory control across various locations
Planning Before Planvisage
The Depot Manager would generate the demand for the next quarter and share the numbers to the Division or Region head, who in turn would moderate the quantities and share it with the marketing team. The marketing team would consolidate all the files. Based on the inputs from Depot Managers, previous year trend and the Inventory holding at Depot, the demand is generated for India as well as Depots. This is shared to the entire team.
The entire process is lengthy and consumes a lot of time.
Manual consolidation of demand data at each level.
Rework and moderation of the demand based on assumptions and not on statistical models.
Consolidation of Inventory and In transit
Quantity for various locations
Manual adjustment on material available dates at Depots became a cumbersome activity.
Demand planning for the promotional products was difficult as they were not considered as demand drivers.
Delayed Depot replenishment
Planning After Planvisage
Past sales history of the Products are considered and various statistical techniques are run to arrive at the Forecast quantities. Among the various techniques, tool automatically picked up the best fit technique based on the MAPE. This was then released to the depot managers to moderate the statistically generated forecast. Collaboration mechanism was put in place across to arrive at a consensus forecast based on bottom-up and top-down approach.
It helped HSIL Limited in:
Providing advance visibility of which Productsales are likely to go up, which of the products are likely to phase out.
It provides the Depot Managers baseline forecast quantities for them to consider while entering the demand quantities Consolidation/ Aggression in a single window for Division heads, Region Heads or Marketing team to view
Role based authorization to view, edit quantities.
Remarks or reasons and be provided for high or low demand quantity
Visibility of Inventory levels and In-transit quantities across depots and plants.
Visibility of replenishment and deployment of Products to Depots
Data for demand planning in Planvisage was extracted from SAP which was also used to create various exception reports.
Forecast Calendar
Following forecast calendar was put in place:
Benefits
Forecast Accuracy improved from 55% to 75%
Sophisticated Statistical Techniques other than just 3 Months Average to predict trend and seasonality at Item – Region combination
Single unified system to collate data from Area Sales Manager and compare with Statistical Forecast
Integration to SAP
Data from SAP is downloaded through ABAP scripts in flat files in a shared folder. This data is uploaded into Planvisage through the import utility tool. It accesses the flat files from the shared folder and updates in Planvisage database.
Overall System Architecture
The overall system architecture deployed at Strides is as given below:
Product built on Microsoft.Net architecture
Data between client and web-server is exchanged through xml. Client references web server through url address
.Net framework has to be installed on all the machines. It is available for free from Microsoft web site
IIS has to be installed on the server. It comes bundled with operation system (Win2000 or XP Professional Edition)
Business logic and data access layer is deployed over IIS
Data access references database through ODBC connection
Different instances of server can be installed within one single IIS
Database could be SQL or MySQL
Uses memory resident database for better performance
