Drinks supplier improves supply chain efficiency

Drinks supply company Kingsland Wines and Spirits is installing manufacturing planning software designed to achieve same-day ordering and delivery.

The company, which manufactures own-brand alcohol for most of the major UK supermarkets, wanted to reduce orders that rely on manual, spreadsheet-based forecasting methods, and to react much more quickly to changes in customer demand.

Tim Horton, Kingsland chief information officer, says the planning software will automate demand forecasting to ensure that enough raw materials are ordered, reducing the safety stocks held on-site to deal with spikes in demand.

‘We need to plan our production around very long manufacturing lead times because, regardless of demand, once the raw materials come in we can only flow liquids through the business at a certain rate,’ said Horton.

Kingsland will use software from supplier Geac and an IBM iSeries server to deliver the extra computing capacity and performance needed for the just-in-time manufacturing procedures.

‘The system will answer three questions: what is needed, when it is needed, and where it is needed,’ said Horton. ‘It will improve supply chain efficiency.’