A BIG installation with BIG capabilities

This implementation is big. At its peak, the implementation was handling 980,000 items, although with some data cleaning this has since been reduced to 880,000 items. It also handles over 400 warehouses.

Every night stock movement and purchasing recommendations are prepared across some 3.4 million SKU locations.

Mark Watson, Group Forecasting and Planning Manager started with Inenco in 2013. He came to Inenco with a background in Fonterra, Nestle and Aristocrat. He has extensive experience with ERP systems like SAP and INFOR.

In this video, Mark describes what is different about the Horizon Inventory software. The planning for each item and warehouse considers over twenty different variables, and much of this capability is simply not found in other software.

"The first thing that we have to recognise about this installation is its size. We have close to a million items."

"It forces us to be policy and master data led."

"What the tuners do that I have certainly not seen in other environments is the ability to play and tweak using real data, in real time on our PROD system."

In this second video, Mark also describes how the volumes that need to be managed are handled by a combination of strategies, policies, good systems and the right people.

"You plan items with similar behaviours together."

"The mechanism should be to make the system sing and dance the way they need it to."

Very Responsive to Challenges

The implementation did have its challenges though. It built on three separate implementations which had different approaches and management styles. The system has combined multiple businesses with more to come.

At the same time there was a significant DC rationalisation worth millions.

From an I.T. point of view Inenco had to integrate multiple ERP systems and computers, each with separate item masters. Across the dozen or so companies there had been different processes and approaches to master data management. This all had to be brought together.

See how all this had to be reviewed and planned and how Mark Watson had to find ways to modify behaviours and in some cases have system modifications to support the scale of changes needed. The relationship with Horizon has been key to success.

"We had a number of change projects happening all at the same time, all connected to each other but also working slightly independently."

"A disparate ERP landscape being consolidated."

"Part of that process was a good challenge backwards and forwards with the Horizon team... in all cases so far we have come up with a very pragmatic, practical solution."

"They were very reactive and responsive to what we needed, a lot more so than we would have ever expected from another software vendor."