Le Creuset cooks up supply chain efficiency

Gavin Wheaton, operations director at Le Creuset, says the aim of the project is to reduce stock holding, while still ensuring very high levels of product availability for customers. Prior to selecting AGR, Le Creuset was carrying out very limited inventory control and forecasting, using data from its Microsoft Dynamics ERP system in Excel spreadsheets. "Having invested in Microsoft Dynamics, we could see that we had a huge area for potential improvement in our inventory management and forecasting capabilities," says Wheaton. "We looked at a number of products and AGR appeared to be exactly what we were looking for in terms of straightforward implementation, integration with MS Dynamics, excellent functionality and ease of use," he continues. And he concludes: "We had too much stock in the warehouse, but were often out of stock on the products we actually needed. We also had no visibility of stock in our other 20 sites around the world, which could have helped us be more responsive and efficient. "We needed to put some standard operational processes in place so that we could work in a more systematic way. AGR has shown us that their product can do this, as well as save money through lower inventory and increased business due to better forecasting and product availability," says Wheaton.