Infor today announced that the South African Breweries Limited (SAB), the South African subsidiary of SABMiller plc., has invested $1.2m in licenses for Infor’s advanced Supply Chain Management (SCM) solution. Infor SCM will be deployed throughout SAB’s operations, including a total of 70 warehouses and 12 production plants. Based on the success of the South African implementation, further implementations will follow in other SABMiller regions.

After reviewing a number of solutions in the market, SAB chose Infor SCM because of Infor’s track record and deep domain expertise within the beverage industry. The capability of Infor SCM to integrate with and extend upon the capabilities of SAB ’s existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was also critical.

Infor’s SCM solution will increase the accuracy of demand forecasting and the visibility of resources throughout SAB’s supply chain. This will help improve on-time delivery performance and cut excess inventory.

"Infor SCM Demand Planning will be used to drive our sales and operations planning, enabling shorter, easier planning cycles and quicker responses to market changes. Our goal is to improve forecast accuracy, leading to better stock availability at the point of purchase. We also expect to reduce costs as a result of more accurate forecasting and precision planning,” explains Rudi Van Schoor, program manager, SAB.

SAB will also deploy Infor SCM Advanced Planner and Advanced Scheduler to optimise and integrate planning and scheduling across five soft drink plants and seven breweries. This will enable SAB to dynamically deploy production of a given product for a given market to the most cost-effective plant. Planning will take into account transportation, production and inventory costs, instead of tying each product for a given market to a single location. This will facilitate continued production when a plant is either closed for maintenance or increases in capacity when production needs to be boosted to support sales promotions.

Infor SCM Advanced Planner will deliver a holistic view and an optimal plan of the entire supply network. This view will include reverse logistics, enabling a consistent supply of empty bottles back to the brewery. Previously a shortage of these bottles has impacted on production. The supply chain plan will then be used by SCM Advanced Scheduler to help sequence the individual processes at each plant, down to the tank, line and minute level.

Rudi Van Schoor explains the need for a complete view of manufacturing and logistics operations: “SAB’s beer and soft drinks divisions have evolved into highly complex businesses. With more demanding consumers, aggressive new product development and a growing customer base we needed to evolve the supply chains of the two businesses.”

“SAB has always seen its supply chain capability as key to achieving competitive advantage. We are confident that our investment in Infor SCM will continue to improve our competitive edge.”

“With seven out of the top 10 global brewers using our solutions Infor has extensive experience in this sector. We have a proven track record in creating maximum value out of supply chain management best practices for companies like SAB,” commented Andrew Kinder, director, solutions marketing, Infor. “Whilst individual components such as Infor SCM Demand Planning help improve responsiveness and decrease inventory, it is the integration of Infor’s SCM solution with the existing ERP system that will deliver real results. Going beyond the capabilities of the incumbent system means SAB can get the competitive advantages from an evolved, integrated manufacturing and logistics environment without disruption and additional cost.”