S&OP and MRPII at Mars Snackfood
Masterfoods is a global fast moving consumer goods company. The key business segments that Masterfoods Australia and New Zealand operate within include Petcare, Snackfood and Food. Within each of these business areas Masterfoods Australia has had prolonged and successful growth over the past few decades.
Along with many of our fellow suppliers the ever changing competitive landscape, market pressures, shrinking real estate, increased importance of Customer engagement and so on led to the initiation of a complete business review and instigation of a change program toward the end of 2004. (more…)
S&OP and Lean in a Bank environment.
Authors:
Nicole Warren – Quality & Process Change Manager, Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) and Science
Peter Atanasovski – Quality & Process Change Manager, Bachelor of Engineering (Hons)
Mark Donato – Operational Performance Manager, Bachelor of Applied Science in Manufacturing Operations.
INTRODUCTION
Between 2002 and 2003, NAB faced an economic backdrop of declining interest rates, which resulted in a twenty per cent growth in home lending volumes. During this time, NAB Lending Services experienced an unprecedented level of backlog with managers unable to clearly monitor resource levels and pending work in the system. As a result, rather than reap the benefits of this surge in lending volumes, it exposed major flaws in operational capability. (more…)
Was Kraft Foods the largest Class A MRPII project in Australia?
In early 1990, Kraft Food Limited’s eleven Australian food production plants confronted several problems familiar to manufacturers around the world – high inventories, chaotic scheduling, poor forecasting accuracy, weak communication and ineffective planning.
Kraft’s senior managers were determined to reverse this situation and make their plants competitive in the global marketplace. “We wanted to provide a basis on which we could move into Total Quality Manufacturing,” says Dick Ridgwell, MRP II Project Manager. (more…)
S&OP, MRPII/ERP and Lean in the Rice Industry
Agribusiness in Australia can be a very challenging business environment given the harsh and varying climatic conditions that companies in Australia are required to handle. From the high’s of a record crop size of 1.7 million tonnes, to the low’s of 300 000 tonnes and the worst drought in 100 years within a two year period. These are some of the extremes that SunRice has had to manage in recent times, at the same time being able to achieve a record per tonne paddy return to growers. How has SunRice been able to successfully and effectively manage the business to ensure the ongoing success of the company? (more…)
Re-Engineering Your Business Planning Through Sales & Operations Planning
By John Dougherty, Senior Partner Partners for Excellence
In a manufacturing or distribution company, bringing supply and demand in balance is a fundamental “law of nature” –it happens as a natural course of events, whether you want it or not. It’s only a matter of who will bring this balance about and when.
Too often, business companies don’t operate in just a “top down” approach. They start that way, but they constantly adjust and reconcile based on “bottom up” and “side in” input. The “bottom up” inputs are the tactical, short-term issues in manufacturing, distribution, sales, marketing, technical development, and human resource planning. As things change, adjustments to the timing and mix of the overall plan must change, while holding to the original business objectives (sales, profits, market share, etc.) for the year in total. (more…)