Online Conference, Supply Chain Event 2021 

PowerPoint presentation from the conference: Saft Sofco WindJee Replanifier En Un Clic Version Finale Supply Chain Event 15 Novembre 2021

The Project

 

Saft, a wholly-owned subsidiary of TotalEnergies, is a global manufacturer of batteries for demanding sectors: aerospace, rail transport, defence, telecommunications and energy.

The disruptions caused by Covid-19 severely tested the supply chain: supplier shortages, shifting customer priorities and partial workshop restarts. In this context, Saft needed to replan its Bordeaux and Poitiers plants quickly and in a controlled manner.

I supported this project as Business Project Manager (AMOA), alongside sofco Limited, publisher of the APS sofco Planning solution, and the Saft project team led by Frédéric Pignorel, Corporate IS Project Manager.

Challenges

 

Before the project, planning relied on macro-driven Excel tools, with manual entry of production orders into the ERP. The situation was clear:

  • A full plant replan took 3 months in 2019
  • Multiple constraints were difficult to manage simultaneously: labour, production lines, specific tooling, safety stock, minimum and maximum batch sizes
  • The Covid context made the need to replan everything quickly a genuine ordeal

 

Objectives

 

Three key objectives were defined:

1-   Up-to-date data: every morning, all demand, supply and production model data automatically refreshed

2-   Full plant visibility: complete oversight of all resources, alerts and constraints

3-   Replanning at the click of a button: generating a new feasible plan on demand

 

Solution Overview

sofco Planning APS was integrated with the existing ERP through automated overnight processing, feeding the planning engine with forecasts, orders, inventory, work-in-progress, bills of materials and routings. The model encompasses 29,000 active products, 187,000 BOM components and 138 manufacturing routings.

 

The solution enables:

  • Demand prioritization by type past-due orders, confirmed orders and forecasts and by customer priority
  • Tailored planning strategies: forward scheduling to maximize capacity utilization, or backward scheduling for a just-in-time approach
  • End-to-end branch planning, from independent demand down to the lowest-level component
  • Scenario simulation with interactive resource impact analysis

 

Results

The deployment of sofco Planning fundamentally transformed Saft’s planning operations. Every morning, a feasible plan is available without any manual intervention, incorporating all manufacturing constraints in real time. Planning now spans all technologies and markets end-to-end, supported by demand-supply cross-analysis reports that enable precise tracking of plan adherence.

 

It is in times of crisis that the solution has proven its true value. Where a full plant replan once took three months in 2019, Saft can now absorb major disruptions such as the Covid-driven supply shocks without operational paralysis.

 

Sources

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