Challenges in today’s food & beverages industry
From food safety regulations to sustainability
Food safety regulations have become more stringent over the years, and today’s consumer demands transparency in terms of a product’s origins. Quality standards and sustainable food chains are high on the consumer’s wish list. End-to-end traceability of products with strict batch and quality management are no longer a luxury but a prerequisite.
Sustainable yet profitable sourcing
Macro-economic trends have a heavy impact on prices and the availability of raw materials. Globalization continues while consumer behavior is shifting and local-for-local strategies are rising. Sourcing options are ubiquitous in todays ‘glocal’ economy. End-to-end scenario management has become essential for informed decision-making.
Are you driving the customer or is the customer driving you?
The power of retail is almost dictating how to organize your supply chain. Yet, other customer channels become more important and have their own quality and service expectations. In addition, consumer needs are volatile and are driving your demand signal. Installing a customer-centric mindset throughout your supply chain is of key importance in order to keep serving your customers the way they want to be served.
How to keep your product portfolio profitable?
Food consumption habits shift fast, and the fickle and impatient consumer desires innovative products. Combined with specific product requirements and private labels in the retail sector, your product portfolio bursts. Insight into the cost of serving and the proper inventory segmentation is vital in order to make the right allocation decisions.
E2E margin optimization is key to surviving
Margins are under pressure and there are so many decision factors that have an impact. Setting the right pricing strategy and proper promotions management is a start. Optimizing efficiency and determining the optimal network inventory levels, considering shelf-life constraints and simultaneously reducing warehouse and distribution costs, result in a complex puzzle. Find the optimal balance by taking all these elements in the mix, and gain insights into the true levers of your E2E margin optimization.
Data and technology to the rescue
Margin optimization by making the right decisions throughout your entire supply chain requires actionable data and insights. Technology is more data driven than ever, while data are often the key hurdle in driving automation in your planning and operations.
Services we have in-house to tackle those challenges
Plant effectiveness
Production plant effectiveness is crucial. However, throughput struggles are still a reality today. Are too many influencing factors making your plant unreliable and ineffective?​ Let us help you discover how to shift your focus in order to grow in reliability and effectiveness without saying goodbye to flexibility. In other words, how to start planning and reserve capacity for uncertainties and, in the end, regain control!
E2E financial optimization through IBP
We break down the silos and ensure the seamless alignment of different functions with a strong integration of finance. We install a mindset of assumption-based decision-making enabled by pragmatic scenario management leading to E2E margin optimization. Creating awareness throughout the full organization and coaching of your team on all levels makes your organization ready to embed these step-change improvements towards faster and better value-based decision-making.
Planning system implementation
We help you to build the digital supply chain of the future. We provide a unique and holistic set of capabilities for leveraging system and process design expertise, change management, advanced data methods, and strong implementation skills. We have an end-to-end mindset, with key capabilities in areas from demand planning and supply planning to production planning and distribution planning.
Network (re)design & optimization
Get the visibility you need across your entire distribution network. Using our in-house LOP.ai modeling tool, we create an auto build and detailed virtual twin that forms the basis of your network design study or optimization (NDS/NDO).
From this starting point, we can build various scenarios both from inside-out point of view, e.g. optimized total cost, lead times, inventory,… as well as from the outside-in point of view considering the value drivers for your (future) customers and translate this into distribution requirements such as service levels, value-added activities, …
With our approach, we pave the way to creating a sustainable platform for capturing this outside-in view on a recurring basis, but also embed network optimization & evaluation into your processes, moving away from the one-off exercises.
Distribution optimization
We help you get the best out of your distribution network, using predictive logistics to focus on every relevant detail: from quality and productivity to supplier and co-packer integration, end-to-end traceability and incorporating sustainability goals. And we stay focused on the bigger picture of your corporate strategy, communications and organizational setup.
Customer centricity
Customer centricity goes way beyond mere sales and customer service. If you really want to make a difference in your end-to-end supply chain to put the customer more at the center and, in the end, ensure a better customer experience, which will result in a competitive advantage, on the one hand you will need an overall customer centricity company strategy & mindset.
However, and potentially even more importantly, you need to put this mindset into practice by for instance embedding a customer-centric solutioning approach as a basic project methodology. Within bluecrux we can support you with the strategy and the pragmatic tools to ensure it is operationalized in all your projects.
“End-to-end visibility and financial scenario management are key enablers to support better decision making in the supply chain and will be crucial to answer to the collective desire to make that supply chain more transparent and sustainable.”
Ben Van Lancker, Food & beverages expert