Advancements include leveraging automation for daily replenishment decisions to improve order accuracy and planner efficiency
TrueCommerce, a global provider of supply chain and trading partner connectivity, integration, and omnichannel solutions, announced key updates to its Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) solution. The enhancements rolled out globally will help manufacturers across various industries like consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, and industrial wholesale products to better manage inventory to their distribution network, giving suppliers and distributors more accuracy and visibility into their ordering process.
Supply chain delays continue to be a top business challenge in 2024, with organizations citing the need for real-time information exchange, visibility into business processes, and eliminating manual processes. As businesses expand their operations and join forces to efficiently get items to their destination, VMI solutions fortify the global network with accurate data, deep visibility, and resiliency, preventing overstock and understock scenarios and mitigating delays.
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“By leveraging these enhancements, our customers are better enabled to predict optimal stock levels; we are empowering suppliers and distributors to make smarter, data-driven decisions that reduce costs and improve product availability across their networks,” said Lee Kimball, TrueCommerce Senior Vice President and General Manager, VMI solutions. “These new updates are designed to provide flexibility and unparalleled collaboration within inventory management processes.”
The TrueCommerce VMI solution updates include:
- Automated Planner – Customers work with TrueCommerce to configure a workflow of decisions and actions that automate worksheet review tasks to improve consistency and efficiency in reviewing and launching orders. The enhanced worksheet review and launch activities result in a more efficient and consistent system for automating order reviews and launches.
- Lot/Batch Management—The updated lot/batch management system improves visibility for suppliers and distributors. It helps track the location and freshness of perishable goods and enables users to see batch expiration dates. This triggers alerts for items that won’t sell before expiring. As a result, suppliers and distributors can collaborate and manage expiration dates on shipments, preventing products from expiring before reaching shelves and reducing waste.
- Transport Efficiency—TrueCommerce’s native truck building functionality can now support mixed pallets and loose case floor position assignments. This functionality determines how a full pallet of an item can be stacked with another item to fill a floor position. This improves truckload strategy and decreases transportation costs.
- Future Demand-Driven Replenishment – The Advanced Demand Forecasting capability uses a sell-through forecast signal to drive replenishment planning and decisions. New functionalities include:
- Daily Sell-Through Forecast Generation: By generating a daily sell-through forecast based on sales profiles, the system can more accurately predict demand. This prediction helps in setting more precise order points.
- Economic Order Quantity (EOQ): Using EOQ to influence ordering increments ensures that orders are placed in economically optimal quantities, balancing ordering costs with holding costs.
- Safety Stock Options: Enhanced safety stock options ensure that inventory levels are sufficient to meet demand even if forecasts are inaccurate. By setting more precise order points, stockouts and overstock situations can be avoided and optimal inventory levels can be maintained.
- Future Out-of-Stock and Overstock Reporting: Future-looking reports on potential out-of-stock and overstock situations allow for proactive inventory management. The enhanced safety stock options contribute to these reports by providing insights into when order points need to be adjusted to prevent these issues.
- External Forecast Integration – Users can view and compare worksheet proposals side-by-side to help decide whether to use the system forecast or the external forecast as the driver, streamlining the inventory management decision-making process.
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TrueCommerce’s VMI solution enables seamless sharing of inventory data among supply chain partners, fostering a lean, demand-driven supply chain. It enhances forecasting, shipment optimization, and in-stock rates by leveraging real-time visibility into product movements and customer needs. By automating key sales activities, it helps manufacturers optimize inventory and create recurring revenue streams. These key updates serve as cost-saving measures and decrease the time spent managing orders, equipping businesses with the most accurate and up-to-date supply chain operation.
Additional updates to the TrueCommerce VMI solution will be announced later this year. TrueCommerce is currently working on using machine learning to analyze sales history and cluster items into sales profiles, creating dashboards for better business analysis, incorporating future orders into the system, and creating a distributor portal to enhance collaboration.
