flexis calculates Mercedes-Benz Car’s demand figures

Better long term planning

The central logistics at Mercedes-Benz Cars calculates its long term demand figures for the upcoming years on the basis of part numbers by using a flexis solution. flexis’ Demand Capacity Planning supports the planning process, which has so far been mostly done manually, with a system supported prognosis. This enables, for the first time, the calculation of global demand figures of large part number ranges – for all plants and series of Mercedes-Benz Cars.

In communication with sales, development, plants, and purchasing, the logistics department forecasts long term parts demand with flexis Demand Capacity Planning, which closes the gap at the end of the operational planning horizon. Actual orders only exist for the next nine months. In the past it was already possible to do detailed planning for the corresponding time horizon based on these orders. In addition, flexis Demand Capacity Planning now enables the calculation of demand and parts availability based on volume forecasting for a planning horizon of up to three years. In addition, flexis Demand Capacity Planning calculates part number requirements for this period, which can be compared with the available or agreed upon capacity, based on planned car volumes, configuration probabilities, and its underlying bill of material information.

Supported by the new vehicle production plan and in cooperation with the actual sales planning, 700,000 monthly demand figures for around 60,000 part numbers have already been calculated with the flexis solution and the results have been communicated to the suppliers.

Transparency of different resources

Besides the innovative demand calculation based on configuration forecasting, flexis Demand Capacity Planning offers another functionality, which simplifies the forward-looking and reliable planning considerably: the solution offers a graphic user interface, which allows the analysis of input data from varying source systems. The flexis installation hereby ensures that the data sources and their statuses can always be tracked. A shortage of part numbers of part families will be indicated in color and can be analyzed separately. This way bottlenecks can be recognized early on and resolved very specifically.

Forecasting creates planning security

Especially in times of hectic growth it pays off to be able to inform suppliers early on about future demand. With flexis Demand Capacity Planning flexis offers a solution which calculates long term part number demands and thus makes a valuable contribution to reliable demand and capacity planning.