Hennig-Olsen Is to Streamline End-to-End Planning with RELEX 

Norway’s leading ice cream manufacturer adds production and inventory planning capabilities to consolidate on a single platform 

Hennig-Olsen Is, the Nordic region’s oldest ice cream producer and distributor, has expanded its long-standing collaboration with RELEX Solutions to include production planning, inventory planning, and purchase planning capabilities. The expansion follows five years of using demand planning across their production site in Kristiansand. 

Hennig-Olsen has produced ice cream in Norway since 1924, offering a broad range of products. Ice cream demand is seasonal, with peak summer volumes requiring extended low season stock builds. It also needs the agility to respond to rapid demand shifts when the high season arrives. Hennig-Olsen operates multiple production and filling lines, with semi-finished goods feeding into finished product lines and dedicated cooking facilities for jam and chocolate. Safety stock and capacity planning were managed in spreadsheets and ERP, and demand changes did not flow consistently through the production horizon, leading to planning gaps and significant unplanned overtime. 

After successfully implementing RELEX ML-based demand planning and promotion planning,  Hennig-Olsen chose to extend that foundation into production, inventory and purchase planning. The implementation covers strategic and tactical production planning across a 52-week horizon, expiry and ageing tracking, purchase planning for finished goods, and inventory planning across internal and external storage locations.  

“We have worked with RELEX for several years to improve our demand forecasting and promotions planning, and the results gave us confidence to take the next step,” said Mathias Hennig-Olsen, Supply Chain Manager, Hennig-Olsen IS. “Bringing production and inventory planning onto the same platform as our demand planning will mean that our teams will be working from a single, connected picture. This is what we need to keep delivering for our customers.” 

By consolidating these processes on the RELEX platform alongside existing demand and promotions planning, Hennig-Olsen will have a connected view across the whole supply chain and week level planning horizons, enabling demand signals to flow directly into production and purchasing decisions without manual intervention. 

“Hennig-Olsen Is is exactly the kind of customer where integrated, end-to-end planning makes a material difference,” said Stefano Scandelli, General Manager, Manufacturing, RELEX Solutions. “Their product range, with lactose-free variants requiring specific ageing windows, and multi-step semi-finished structures, which demands precision that spreadsheets simply cannot deliver at scale. We can help their team replace manual workarounds with planning processes that reflect the real complexity of their operation.