Streamlining brewery supply chain

Abstract

UBL is currently using a tool for minimizing the lost sales at depots due to stockouts. The tool optimizes the inventory level at the depots considering the past sales and forecast. However, the tool assumes 100% stock availability at breweries all the time and then tries to optimize the inventory levels and creates the sourcing plan. The manufacturing team is not able to satisfy the brewery inventory norms always and hence the tool fails during high utilisation periods. Also, the tool is not able to devise an optimum sourcing plan as it assumes that a particular depot in Karnataka can source from only one particular brewery. So, when a stockout occurs in that depot and the linked brewery is also out of stock, the depot has to call and place an order with a brewery in a different state, increasing sourcing costs. This tool has to be extended upstream so that brewery inventory norms can be achieved and the overall supply chain can be streamlined. The objective is to meet brewery inventory norms which would be able to satisfy the depot inventory norms, keeping the cost low. The end goal is to identify problems and suggest improvements to enable collaborative planning between the breweries and the depots leading to measurable supply chain efficiencies. This involves a study of inventory management to avoid stockouts, shipment routing policies to minimize freight costs, and sales and operations planning to achieve demand-supply balance.