Clothing manufacturer Nanso, which is currently celebrating its 90th anniversary, now uses RELEX for its forecasting. In 2010, Nanso Group launched a development project for the forecasting process, and it needed a system to support this. The importance of forecasting was emphasised in situations where Nanso wanted to ensure better product availability to customers while optimising stock levels. For Nanso, forecasting is especially challenging as the number of product variations through different sizes and colours and that of seasonal articles are large. Nanso and RELEX began their cooperation by drawing up a feasibility study which stated that quantitative forecasting works well with continuous product lines. Based on this study, Nanso decided to deploy the RELEX Forecaster tool. For RELEX, the cooperation with Nanso has been the first forecasting project for the clothing industry.
The project has already paid off. The amount of manual labour in the forecasting of continuous product lines has been reduced thanks to a more efficient quantitative forecasting system. “Our sourcing planning team has also benefitted from the fact that there is currently just one single user interface for forecasting seasonal products. This enables us to have a general view of the situation quickly and effortlessly, whereas before we had to go through several different Excel spreadsheets. The RELEX reporting functions have also proven to be extremely useful,” states Sanna Tiikkainen, Sourcing and Logistics Manager for Nanso Group.
Nanso has also planned to use RELEX beyond forecasting: “We believe that, in the future, RELEX will also provide us with better support when planning our material needs. This way, we can multiply the benefits from the system,” says Tiikkainen.