SAP Advanced Planning and Optimisation: a Demand Planning continuous process improvement Case

This Master Thesis Project was developed within the ICT Department of a Multinational Company in the Food Industry. Following the implementation of a common Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system provided by SAP, processes have been standardized across the globe and the data flow has been made seamless. The importance of Supply Chain Management has been acknowledged by the Company, that invested in the development of a SAP module called SAP Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO) in order to manage its Supply Chain processes. Demand Planners have been provided with more advanced techniques to manage their day-to-day tasks. Nonetheless, in the case of flavour Production Sites, demand planning remains an issue because of several reasons linked both with the nature of business and to difficulties to gather information from participants in the Supply Chain. This Thesis focuses on the request for a Continuous Improvement Project for the Company’s Flavour Sites in India and the suggested solution to improve their demand forecast accuracy. The project aims to provide a method to the Demand Planners to perform a more accurate forecast on the SAP system that will be released to the Supply Planners. The new process proposed carries advantages and disadvantages that will be discussed in the second part of the Thesis. The final part is dedicated to the Case Study analysis, measurement of the improvements, the findings and recommendation for the future.