A specialist aerospace materials distribution business with 3 UK locations and 5 International sites faced significant service challenges. This was due to lead times of up to 72 weeks for raw materials but customer delivery lead times of less than 2 weeks. Customer service was poor despite high levels of inventory. The purchasing team used spreadsheets to determine demand and plan forward purchases as they had no effective planning functionality in their SAP system.

Red Kite helped the senior team to define its vision for planning excellence and determine new processes, organisational structure and IT to support the vision.

Over 18 months we implemented a programme of major change including the implementation of Optimiza Inventory software. A central demand and inventory management team was established and trained in new processes and tools and began to deliver improved stock availability and customer service across the network.

The business derived significant financial benefits including:

• 25% (£8million) reduction in inventory
• 75% reduction in stocked lines
• 30% improvement in stock availability to 94%

Most importantly the client has established itself as the market leader in the provision of supply chain management services to the aerospace industry.