ABFRL wins award for best IBP process in apparel industry

The DPFF awards are organised by Institute of Supply Chain Management (ISCM) along with SCMPro. Judges for the awards comprise senior industry professionals in the technology, demand planning and forecasting, business and innovation space.

To support its high-volume business, ABFRL recognised that it could not continue using manual, disconnected processes and spreadsheet-based planning that were error-prone, time-consuming, and provided limited visibility into demand and supply. With the goal to enable real-time collaboration, inventory management, visibility, and end-to-end connectivity across its supply chain, ABFRL embarked on a digital transformation journey in partnership with O9 Solutions.

ABFRL chose O9 solutions based on the flexibility of the platform and its intuitive end-user experience that seamlessly connects with existing tools. Today with O9, the fashion retailer has standardised its IBP process, strengthening inventory planning and review across all brands. O9 has been instrumental in transforming planning operations at ABFRL including:  long-range planning/S&OP, pre-season and in-season demand management, constraint-based supply planning, capacity planning and fabric planning,

Leveraging the O9 platform, ABFRL has improved service levels with vendors and partners, and reduced costs related to raw materials, capacity and inventory. In the first year after going live on the O9 platform, ABFRL's benefits have included: reducing past-season inventory by 9 per cent in FY18, increasing finished goods inventory turns by 10 per cent in FY18 while experiencing a 15 per cent average increase in finished goods sales revenue.

"Aditya Birla is one of the few fashion retailers who is a Brand Manufacturer, so we needed to implement a platform that could not only handle around a million style codes for our fashion retail business, but also provide intelligent information to produce, procure fabric and manage capacity planning across production units," said Swaminathan R, COO - central sourcing, manufacturing & supply chain, ABFRL. "The O9 platform had the flexibility and power to address our unique challenges, while enabling us to bring greater speed, accuracy, and collaboration to our planning and decision-making processes."

"The O9 platform enables companies to easily automate mission-critical processes, powering intelligent solutions to their most complex challenges across planning and operations," said Chakri Gottemukkala, co-founder and CEO of O9 Solutions. "The complexity inherent in today's trend-driven fashion retail business is significant. The efficiency and effectiveness improvements that ABFRL has achieved using the O9 platform serve as a testament to the strength of O9 solutions, the ABFRL commitment to transformation and the partnership between our two companies."

O9 Solutions is the premier AI-powered platform for driving digital transformations of integrated planning and operations capabilities. O9's clients span a variety of industries across manufacturing and retail supply chain.

With more than 9 million engaged customers and a million SKUs, ABFRL is home to India's biggest apparel labels and is the country's largest fashion retailer. The company manages a vast distribution network spanning over 2,500 outlets and maintains manufacturing capabilities for some of its categories, and its lifestyle brands lead the market in their respective segments. (PC)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India