Did you know that McCain produces 1 of every 4 frozen fries on the planet? And today at Sapphire, I had the chance to listen to Robert Szabo, from McCain Foods talk about the companies integrated business planning processes that make that happen.
For those that don’t know, McCain are a Canadian food manufacturing company with global sales of $9.5bn Canadian dollars. They have 21,000 employees worldwide and sell their products in 160 countries.
The company purpose is to “bring enjoyment to people’s lives through great tasting food in a way which reflects our values. We do this by succeeding together with our teams, business and community partners around the world - because we know when we work and grow together, we succeed together.”
The Integrated Business Planning Journey
Robert explained that “In 2017 McCain embarked on a project to streamline planning processes by implementing SAP Integrated Business Planning modules for Demand, Inventory, Response and Supply Planning, and to date we have made considerable progress”. Robert highlighted the following areas:
- Inventory Optimization went live in May 2018 which enables McCain to determine optimal safety stock targets based on variability and perform scenario planning. As Robert stated, “previously we planned based on standard safety stocks. Now we take into account demand supply and transportation variability to calculate levels. So now we sometimes hold les of a specific product, and sometimes we hold more. The key is we have the right inventory to balance costs and customer service”.
- Network Supply Planning (Monthly) also went live in May 2018 which involved the conversion of supply planning process from APO SNP to IBP Supply Planning. This has “enabled us to better perform scenario planning and automate the reporting the results”.
- Demand Planning went live in July 2018 which enabled McCain to convert the processes from APO DP to “integrate demand and sales processes and reporting”.
Robert concluded that “Having all Integrated Business Planning modules on a common platform has generated huge benefits for analytics and reporting within McCain”.
I would like to thank Robert for giving a great overview.
Learn more about SAP Integrated Business Planning or register for the Infobrief by IDC, Digital Business Planning is at the Heart of Supply Chain Transformation.