Analytics and planning support for manufacturers
Raw material inventory, production planning and lead-time variability, worked from the ERP exports and spreadsheets you already produce.
Where manufacturing planning usually breaks
Manufacturers rarely lack systems. They have an ERP, often an MRP module, and a planner who knows the business well. What they lack is confidence that the numbers underneath those systems are right.
The failures are specific and recognisable:
- Raw material inventory set by judgement years ago, carried forward through every system migration since.
- Lead times in the system that reflect what a supplier quoted, not what they deliver. The gap between the two is where stockouts come from.
- Production plans built on finished-goods demand without visibility of which component will constrain them.
- MRP output nobody fully trusts, so the planner reworks it in a spreadsheet before acting.
- Expediting as routine, absorbing cost and attention that planning should have prevented.
Each of these is a data problem before it is a process problem, which is why they persist through system changes.
Where we usually start
In roughly this order, though the assessment decides.
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Reset raw material and finished goods targets against real demand variability and measured lead times. Usually the fastest payback.
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Forecast at the level that drives purchasing — often components rather than finished goods.
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Correct the item master, supplier records and lead times that everything else depends on.
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Replace the critical planning spreadsheet with something auditable that does not depend on one person.
What a first engagement looks like
A free assessment, then a fixed-scope first project. For a manufacturer that is most often an inventory review covering purchased parts and raw materials, because the data needed is usually already available and the working-capital effect is measurable.
We work from exports. You do not need to give us ERP write access, and you do not need to prepare anything first.
Related services
Common questions
Our MRP already does planning. What would you add?
MRP calculates requirements correctly from the data it is given. The usual problem is the data: lead times that were entered once and never updated, safety stock set by judgement, bills of material that have drifted from what the floor actually builds. We fix the inputs and add the decisions MRP does not make, such as what to do when the plan is infeasible.
We make to order. Does forecasting apply?
Often yes, at the component level. Even when finished goods are made to order, the raw materials and purchased parts underneath them have demand patterns worth forecasting — and those are usually where the long lead times are. Forecasting the inputs is what protects the promise date.
Our bills of material are not accurate. Is that fatal?
No, but it limits what can be done well, and we will tell you where. BOM accuracy affects component requirements directly. Often the practical route is to start with finished-goods inventory and purchased parts, where the data is more reliable, and improve the BOMs in parallel.
How do you handle long-lead-time purchased parts?
They get the most attention, because they are where planning errors are most expensive and least recoverable. We measure actual lead-time variability from receipt history, set safety stock against that rather than the quoted figure, and generally recommend forecasting them separately from short-lead items.
Find out what your data can already tell you
A free 30-minute data readiness assessment. We look at what you have, tell you what it can support today, and name the first thing worth building. No preparation needed.