Baked goods manufacturers

Flour, sugar, and dairy prices and availability shift with weather, harvests, and commodity markets, forcing fast calls about which products to make and where to sell them without giving up margin. 

Seasonal peaks, promotions, and shifting consumer trends move fast, and average-week estimates aren’t granular enough to catch them. Since baked goods have a short shelf life, a forecast that’s off by even a day can become waste, a markdown, or a missed order. 

Proving and fermentation run on a fixed biological clock, allergen changeovers dictate what can run next to what, and labor and line capacity cap how much can happen at once. These are all constraints a production plan has to respect simultaneously. 

Demand, purchasing, production, and distribution too often run on separate plans and spreadsheets. Without one demand forecast feeding supply decisions directly, plans drift out of sync and gaps between planning and execution compound. Without scenario planning, teams can’t test an ingredient or demand swing against the plan before production is committed. 

Balance unique facility constraints, allergen and alternative recipe considerations, and labor requirements to schedule production that minimizes downtime and maximizes profitability.

Forecast demand at the SKU and day level at scale using 100% machine learning, capturing seasonality, promotions, and pricing shifts before they turn into waste. Where retailer POS data is available, forecasts sharpen further upstream. 

Purchasing proposals are generated from the same demand and production signal, so ingredient shortfalls get flagged before the plan locks. When a key ingredient is constrained, optimization shows which products to make and where to sell them to protect margin. 

One shared plan replaces spreadsheet reconciliation across purchasing, production, distribution, and finance, letting teams re-optimize scenarios in minutes as supply or demand shifts and keep S&OP/IBP decisions tied to real profitability. 

ERP systems are great at recording orders and running the plan, but fixed parameters and simplified logic can’t balance shelf life, shared lines, and allergen changeovers. RELEX adds the optimization on top, so every schedule reflects what’s both freshest and most profitable.