PILKINGTON STREAMLINES INVENTORY AND IMPROVES CUSTOMER SERVICE WITH INFOR

Global glass products leader to improve market share with better stock availability with Infor SCM Demand Planning

Infor, one of the largest global providers of enterprise software, today announced that Pilkington, a global provider of glass products, has selected its Infor SCM Demand Planning solution.  The forecasting, inventory planning, and sales and operations planning solution is expected to improve product availability and reduce inventory in Pilkingtons global automotive glass replacement (AGR) business.

Pilkington has a market leadership position in the global AGR market which has shown consistent growth for the past two decades.  Pilkington Automotive Glass Replacement (PAGR) identified a need for business-specific demand-planning solutions when the company realized it could increase revenue and stimulate demand by improving the customer experience. 

Pilkingtons complex distribution model involves multiple stock locations, expanded product ranges and high volumes of product change. Pilkington sought a solution with the experience built in to handle this complexity as its existing planning systems failed to meet the high levels of customer service availability required, without increasing cost and inventory.  Infor SCM Demand Planning proved itself to be capable of providing a level of support beyond ERP and localised point solutions. It was chosen because of its scalability and the balance between functionality and ease-of-use and implementation.

The previous ERP planning route was unable to cope with the complexity of our supply chain and we were prevented from achieving the high levels of stock availability we require to compete and grow in our target markets, said Mike Ball, Director of Projects, Pilkington AGR.

At present we are running a very diligent implementation but we are very confident that Infor SCM Demand Planning will enable us to reduce the inventory held at our European Distribution Centre and respond better to our customers requirements with improved availability.

We love to work with market leading organisations like Pilkington in projects which we know drive genuine bottom line results in a very short timeframe.  Supply chain pressures are greater than ever and we are seeing an uptake in companies like Pilkington who come to us to extend their ERP systems in areas like demand and supply planning, warehousing and transport.   Infor is unique in offering an end-to-end supply chain management solution from concept to customer, said Andrew Kinder, EMEA Supply Chain Management Product Marketing Manager for Infor.

About Infor

Infor delivers fully integrated enterprise solutions for specific industries, as well as best-in-class standalone products that address the essential challenges its customers face in areas such as enterprise resource planning, supply chain planning and execution, customer and supplier relationship management, asset management, product lifecycle management, and business intelligence. With more than 8,100 employees and offices in 100 countries, Infor provides enterprise solutions to more than 70,000 customers.