Customer description

Fobaro Group is an international distributor of industrial adhesives, chemical raw materials and cutting tools headquartered in Poland. It owns the Fix Grip and Extrem brands that have been on the market since 1996. Fobaro has products from renowned global manufacturers as well as its own brands. Fobaro's adhesives are used in a wide range of industries, such as paper processing, bottling and food processing, construction, automotive, aerospace, railroads, printing and footwear manufacturing.

Purpose of the project

The aim of the project was to support the process of optimizing the stocking of Fobaro's distribution warehouse directed at increasing the availability of products for the company's customers, while rationalizing inventory levels.

Challenge

Fobaro's customers operate in a wide range of diverse markets, with unique characteristics that require a supply of products from both domestic and foreign manufacturers. Fobaro's customer demand is characterized by high dynamics and seasonality, and the company's suppliers have very different terms for handling orders. All this means that the supply chain in which Fobaro operates requires very fast adaptation to the changing business environment and accurate decision-making. The company's inventory management methods used to date, based on a simplistic approach to demand forecasting and inventory analysis, needed to be improved to meet the company's growth objectives.

Solution

To meet the challenge, Fobaro decided to use advanced inventory control methods based on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) available in Smartstock's Dature Premium application. The application included a full process of demand forecasting, inventory simulation, generation of optimal stocking recommendations and an alert system for out-of-stock and overstock risks.

Project implementation

The implementation of the Dature Premium solution was carried out in the agreed 2 stages. Within 2 weeks of the start of the cooperation, the demand forecasting module was launched, and within another 4 weeks the inventory optimization module was launched.

As part of the project's implementation, data exchange was ensured between the Dature Premium system and the ERP system used by Fobaro, which is COMARCH XL.

During the implementation of the system, products were reclassified and inventory control elements were reparameterized, among others. Such as:

• sales coverage days
• MIN-MAX sizes
• Service Level
• product and supplier minimums ( including full-vehicle orders)
• ordering calendars

Business benefits

The business benefits associated with the project are related to the following areas:

• Reduce the risk of non-availability of goods to customers
• reduce the size of excess inventory
• Capturing demand signals and automatically adjusting stocking to them.