Finnish food manufacturer Saarioinen to further optimize production planning and provide holistic view of supply chain constraints to better balance supply and demand.
Saarioinen Oy, a prominent Finnish food manufacturer, is deepening their collaboration with RELEX Solutions, provider of unified supply chain and retail planning solutions. Having benefited from the expertise of RELEX in demand planning, promotion forecasting, and budgeting since 2016, Saarioinen is now set to integrate long-term capacity planning. This move is geared towards refining customer service levels, particularly during promotions, reducing manual interventions, and offering a clearer insight into capacity management.
With a large product line encompassing over 900 SKUs, Saarioinen’s use of the RELEX solutions has already resulted in remarkable outcomes such as a forecasting accuracy of over 95% and an impressive service level surpassing 99.5%.
Before implementing RELEX for capacity planning, Saarioinen operated using manual methods. While these methods were adequate, they sought to enhance their capacity assessments and detect potential bottlenecks. Additionally, an integrated tool offered the promise of improved collaboration across departments like production, sales, and demand planning, ensuring more streamlined sales and operations planning. Moving forward, RELEX will help Saarioinen improve visibility to key production planning metrics such as capacity utilization.
Anu Lempinen, Production Director at Saarioinen, said, “Our previous process for managing supply constraints was labor-intensive. We now have a streamlined approach to planning with a panoramic view of supply constraints, which is invaluable to our sales and demand planning teams. Our pilot phase with RELEX, spanning from May to September 2023, received positive feedback. We are now gearing up to deploy the full-fledged solution across nearly 50 production lines come December 2023.”
“Our longstanding relationship with Saarioinen is built upon a foundation of consistent successes and mutual growth objectives,” says Michael Gylling, RELEX Director of Product, Consumer Packaged Goods. “Drawing from our previous achievements, our primary objective remains the same: to elevate their customer service standards and optimize their planning mechanisms. This recent announcement underscores our commitment to fostering sustained collaborative excellence.”