Infor today announced that international brewing leader Heineken International has selected Infor Advanced Scheduling for a global standardization program that will see the application rolled out to its breweries in 20 countries. Infor Advanced Scheduling is expected to play a key role in helping to harmonize and standardize approximately 90% of the operations in these breweries, helping Heineken to optimize capacity across this network, reduce production complexity and improve purchasing power.
The project is the latest phase of a relationship between Infor and Heineken that spans more than 20 years. Following a pilot in two breweries in Italy, Heineken now has a template to implement throughout operating companies across the globe.
Based on this template, and previous experience, Heineken expects to decrease levels of inventory of materials such as glass bottles by up to 40%, whilst improving capacity by up to 10% and helping enhance the consistency of workload scheduling in the breweries.
Following a selection process, Infor was chosen on the basis of the enhanced functionality offered by Infor Advanced Scheduling as well as Infor's deep domain expertise within the brewing micro vertical.
Heineken also uses Infor Advanced Planning as part of its sales and operational planning (S&OP) process. The brewer uses a monthly S&OP cycle that takes third party application data and experiments for various scenarios across 18 months, including promotions, capacity shifts and the introduction of new products.
"It is vital for us to reduce complexity in our operations and keep control of production," said Ad van Delzen, strategic planner, Heineken. "Strategic applications such as Infor Advanced Scheduling mean that we can extend this control across our breweries and offer a route to improved profitability and much greater efficiency, without losing the individual characteristics of that brewery or beer."
"The brewing micro vertical is one of the most complex manufacturing industries," said Phil Lewis, vice-president, global solution consulting, Infor. "By standardizing operations, there are often very quick wins that can be realized and then augmented by quicker new product introduction or better alignment of production and customer demand. Leaders such as Heineken recognize this and have the added opportunity to repeat this process at scale. This optimal alignment means businesses can handle vast complexity with confidence."
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