SABMiller says cheers to more ERP and SCM

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA: The South African Breweries Limited (SAB), the South African subsidiary of SABMiller plc., has invested $1.2m in licenses for Infor's advanced Supply Chain Management (SCM) solution.

This SCM will be deployed throughout SAB's operations, including a total of 70 warehouses and 12 production plants. Based on the success of the South African implementation, further implementations will follow in other SABMiller regions.

After reviewing a number of solutions in the market, SAB chose Infor SCM because of Infor's track record and deep domain expertise within the beverage industry, as per a press release. The capability of Infor SCM to integrate with and extend upon the capabilities of SAB 's existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was also critical.

After reviewing a number of solutions in the market, SAB chose Infor SCM because of Infor's track record and deep domain expertise within the beverage industry. The capability of Infor SCM to integrate with and extend upon the capabilities of SAB 's existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) system was also critical.

"Infor SCM Demand Planning will be used to drive our sales and operations planning, enabling shorter, easier planning cycles and quicker responses to market changes. Our goal is to improve forecast accuracy, leading to better stock availability at the point of purchase. We also expect to reduce costs as a result of more accurate forecasting and precision planning," explains Rudi Van Schoor, program manager, SAB.

Infor's SCM solution will increase the accuracy of demand forecasting and the visibility of resources throughout SAB's supply chain. This will help improve on-time delivery performance and cut excess inventory.

SAB will also deploy Infor SCM Advanced Planner and Advanced Scheduler to optimize and integrate planning and scheduling across five soft drink plants and seven breweries. This will enable SAB to dynamically deploy production of a given product for a given market to the most cost-effective plant.

Planning will take into account transportation, production and inventory costs, instead of tying each product for a given market to a single location.

This would facilitate continued production when a plant is either closed for maintenance or increases in capacity when production needs to be boosted to support sales promotions.