Has your organization been struggling to deliver a consistent fill rate
to your client or service level to your client’s customers? Has it been challenging for your company to keep decent inventory coverage or maintaining satisfying forecast accuracy? If you answered yes to one of these questions, it might be time for your corporation to rethink some aspects of your supply chain. In today’s competitive market, it is more and more difficult (if not almost impossible) to gain efficiencies and improve demand response for companies working in silos. One of the key enablers of efficiencies and improvements across supply chains is to create and use collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment
(CPFR) strategies across organizations’ boundaries. CPFR strategies allow aligning of multiple S&OP processes and jointly plan supply chain activities to ensure that the joint business plans between organizations are respected, while minimizing
costs and maximizing efficiency from end-to-end of your supply chain.What Is CPFR?
Collaboration is a journey; it is built step by step. It requires a significant investment of time and resources. Each client has a different mission, organisational structure, targets, objectives and so forth. There is no “one size fits all” solution; collaboration has to be adapted and tailor made for each major customer. Hence, the first step is to identify for which customers the return on investment will be the greatest. The client needs to have a collaborative mindset, an open mind and represent a significant percentage of your total turnover.
CPFR Is Collaborative By Nature
Secondly, you need to determine which individual in your organization has the right skills and knowledge to build such an important project. This person needs outstanding client facing and PR skills while having a great and extended knowledge of internal processes, systems, business opportunities and a great sense of the “big picture”. To kick off the CPFR project, the objectives, priorities and expectations of both parties need to be discussed, defined and agreed. Furthermore, the customer’s processes, systems and operational rules have to be mapped and completely understood.
Subsequently, the collaboration project leader has to realise a quick “win-win” in order to gain the trust and build relationship with the customer’s organisation. I can’t stress enough the importance of relationship and trust for successful CPFR. Afterwards, joint key performance indicators need to be established. Collaborative companies need to agree on SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic or Relevant and Time based). A target for each KPI has to be determined. I highly recommend creating a weekly scorecard or dashboard displaying all the KPI to track and monitor. This dashboard has to be shared between all stakeholders of both corporations. It is very useful to monitor KPI, identify opportunities and keep everybody informed of the project’s progress. Corrective actions need to be taken to improve results and tackle the different challenges and opportunities.
If you are able find the right balance of all these ingredients, using the right resources in the right time, your organization will definitely become the best in class supplier for your customer! CPFR strategies are great tools to make your supply chain a competitive advantage in today’s market!
Cedrick Laporte-Roy
Customer Supply Chain Manager
L’Oréal
Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) is defined as a business practice that combines the brainpower of two or more trading partners in planning the ways to fulfill the customer demand. They also explained the relationship that CPFR links best practices of sales and marketing, such as category management, to the implementation of supply chain planning and completion process, to increase availability while reducing inventory, transportation and logistics costs. Basically CPFR is an approach that deals with the requirements for good demand management. The most involved industries with CPFR are consumer products and food and beverage.
The main objective of Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) is to “optimize” the supply chain process by:
- Improving accuracy of forecasting demand,
- Delivering the right product at the right time to the right location,
- Reducing inventory,
- Avoiding stock outs, and
- Improving customer service.
But the most important fact on which the achievement of objective and activities of CPFR depend is to have collaborative trading partners who share risk and information mutually in the whole process. Without Collaborative planning and forecasting between the trading partners will make the supply chain “suboptimal”, thus will result in less-than-maximum supply chain profits. It is observed that forecasting developed only by firm tends to be inaccurate most of the time so therefore in CPFR when both the buyer and seller collaborate in forecasting, then it makes possible to match buyer needs with supplier production plans, thus ensuring competent replenishment. CPFR also helps in avoiding expensive corrections after the fact when demand or promotions have changed.
Benefits of CPFR:
- Strengthens supply chain partner relationships.
- Provides analysis of sales and order forecast which improves the forecast accuracy.
- Manage the demand chain and proactively eliminate problems before they appear.
- Allow collaboration on future requirements and plans.
- Combine planning, forecasting and logistic activities.
- Provides efficient category management and understanding of consumer purchasing patterns.
Challenges for CPFR implementation
There are top three difficulties faced by organizations in implementing CPFR:
- Making internal changes: Internal changes must always be tackled by top management as change is always difficult but if the top management is dedicated to the project and in educating employees about the benefits of CPFR then there are more chances of getting a successful internal change.
- Total implementation cost: Although cost is an important factor to be considered always but companies must determine whether they are at a competitive disadvantage.
- Trust: It is one of the biggest hurdles in general implementation of CPFR as many retailers are unwilling to share the information required to implement CPFR.
Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) Process Model
The Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) reference model provides a framework for planning, forecasting and replenishment process. Figure below represents the framework components. A buyer and a seller work as Collaboration Partners and work together to satisfy the customer demand which at the centre of the model.
The key Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) activities to enhance performance of Collaboration partners are –
- Strategy & Planning – Establish the rules for collaborative relationship. Determine the product mix and develop event plans for the period.
- Demand and Supply Management – Project consumer (POS) demand, as well as order and shipment requirements over the planning period.
- Execution – Place orders, prepare and deliver shipments, receive and stock products in retail stores, record sales transactions and make payments.
- Analysis – Monitor planning and execution activities for exception conditions. Aggregate results and calculate KPI’s. Share insights and adjust plans for better performance.
Related Posts:
- Cost Reduction - Meaning and Techniques
- Kaizen and Kanban in Lean Manufacturing
- Postponement Strategy in Supply Chain Management
- Inventory Management System
- Importance of Production Planning and Control
- Inventory Management Concepts in Supply Chain Management
- Sales Forecasting - Meaning and Methods
- Supply Chain Management Processes
- Inventory Management Techniques
- Supply Chain Performance Measurement