Applying lean principles and AI-driven demand planning to improve service levels, reduce cost and eliminate waste — in a supply chain built up over decades.
Illustrative engagement — reflects our approach and capability across this type of challenge
FMCG supply chains are rarely designed — they are accumulated. Supplier relationships, distribution arrangements and inventory policies that made sense in a different competitive environment become embedded in how the organisation operates, long after the conditions that justified them have changed. The result is a supply chain that is complex, costly and fragile — optimised for a world that no longer exists.
We apply Value Stream Mapping to understand the end-to-end flow from supplier to shelf — identifying the waste that is hidden in handoffs, waiting time, overproduction and unnecessary inventory. In parallel, we assess the data infrastructure required to support AI-driven demand planning: the quality, timeliness and granularity of demand signals, the integration between commercial and operational planning, and the decision-making processes that forecasts are supposed to inform. McKinsey's Three Horizons framework guides our prioritisation — delivering tangible cost and service improvements in the near term while building the capability for AI-enabled planning in the medium term. Change management draws on ADKAR throughout: line managers and planners who do not understand why the new process works better, or do not have the skills to operate it, will revert to the old one.
"Supply chain transformation that starts with the technology is supply chain transformation that will fail. Start with the value stream. The technology is the last step, not the first."
The outcomes we target are specific and measurable: improvement in case fill rate, reduction in days of inventory held, reduction in waste from expired or overproduced stock, and — the test of whether the change has really landed — a planning organisation that is running the new process independently, without our involvement.