Opcenter (Preactor) APS

Another key challenge lies in handling the diverse ways that demand comes from different markets, as Paul Hazelwood, Supply Logistics Manager explains. “When dealing with UK and EU demand, we receive a forecast breakdown to an individual product level within a given time period, typically a rolling 20 week basis. For the US and Japan, however, we work on a Make to Order basis, again over 20 weeks, but with a 4 week locked window when levels can’t be changed. And whereas orders for the UK, US and Japan are scheduled on a weekly basis, the EU is scheduled on a less regular basis.” All finished products irrespective of final destination are routed via the company’s Andover facility.

Given the scale of production, scheduling this accurately would be a challenge in and of itself but as Hazelwood continues, there are many other factors that have to be taken into consideration. “We have a fixed number of machines running over a 3 shift period so optimizing sequencing is critical to maximizing capacity usage.“   He continues, “We have other considerations such as product grouping and allergen control to take into account in order to minimize changeover and clean down times and maintain a smoothness of supply. Furthermore, certain products have specific storage requirements.

For example, our fresh roasted coffee has to be packed with a given number of days of the coffee being roasted. Different suppliers have different delivery times and this therefore impacts the start times of such orders and all of these variables have to be factored into both our high level and detailed scheduling.”

With over 26 years’ experience at Mars, Hazelwood was only brought into the project as the company was implementing Preactor AS and AP. He outlines how the company used to try and meet the scheduling challenges. “We previously used a system called Schedule X but this dealt with a rolling 20 week horizon, it only dealt with 24 hour operations. The schedule used to be based on buckets of data and was viable because more stock made it easier to adjust the schedule. The combination of Mars IS withdrawing its support for the systems and wanting become leaner, which meant using more accurate data and reducing stock levels, a better solution was called for.”

For Mars, that solution was Preactor AS & AP, and when Hazelwood arrived on the project in November 2011, various internal decisions left him in his own words, “holding the baby and thrown in at the deep end with the project.” It is a testament to Hazelwood’s dedication, the intuitive nature of the Preactor solutions and the support of the Preactor team that in the 8 weeks remaining before “go live”, that the system was fully developed, tested, and implemented for Mars’ unique requirements. “There was a lot of hands-on training and a large amount of scenario testing and I was essentially walked through the project by the Preactor team until and beyond the go-live on February 20th 2012.”

The project is still in its early days and Hazelwood admits there is still work to do given the scale of the implementation, but there is already a marked improvement. All demand forecasts and orders are now received and imported into Preactor AP along with the relevant sales and stock data from which a rolling 20 week high level schedule is generated. Hazelwood again, “GMPS (AP) looks at high level scheduling at a weekly level and ensures that we remain within target levels across all our SKUs, taking into consideration our high level constraints. From here we export the GMPS data into our Preactor AS which then handles the detailed scheduling down to what needs to be done, where and when, taking into account our detailed level constraints. Once the schedule has been exported to Preactor, we generate an MRP report which we use to order our materials.”

The most immediate benefit from Preactor AP has been the lowering of stock levels across the entire pipeline. While still too early to quantify the full impact of this, Hazel wood cites the example of one particular SKU where stock levels have been reduced from 10,000 pallets down to 4,000. Applied across all SKUs this represents a very considerable cost saving. Because of the interlinked nature of the Preactor AP and APS solution, where the impacts of every decision can be seen on everything else, Hazelwood also says that the company now works much more closely, at a global level. “Anyone involved in the pipeline has visibility of the entire pipeline and this increases confidence and trust at every level.”

Looking to the future, he is adamant that while further ongoing refinement is called for, “the combined benefits will be very good once everything is fully working.” Hence he concludes, “Preactor GMPS is driving internal behavior change and we are definitely already seeing Lean Improvements. We have a long road ahead but there are undoubtedly big benefits in the future.”

For more about the Mars Company, visit:  https://www.mars.com/made-by-mars/mars-wrigley