Shifting Connected
Planning into High Gear

The company's financial forecasts were based on expected order creation dates, while Maestro needed order delivery dates. Before our team's involvement, planners relied on manual calculations in Microsoft Excel to bridge that gap.

We replaced this manual workaround with a custom forecasting model that used historical actuals to generate dynamic spread profiles. This allowed forecast timing to better reflect actual demand behavior and removed a major source of spreadsheet dependency.

The client needed item substitution logic that could handle real-world complexity. For example, some customers could receive refurbished items before new inventory. Others required products with new components only. Standard Maestro prioritization rules could not fully support these business requirements.

We developed an automated process to manage master data and substitution configuration. Each supply source was assigned a priority value, ensuring substitutable items flowed in the correct order based on product version, customer requirements and business rules.

The team also simplified the customer pool structure to reduce complexity and improve long-term maintainability.

The company's existing safety stock logic was driving shipments too frequently, even when product was not needed to fulfill actual customer demand.

We identified an opportunity to delay lower-priority replenishment when supply was constrained or transportation capacity could be better used. In specific scenarios, inventory at last-mile sites could temporarily dip below safety stock targets without affecting service. Safety stock could then be replenished when supply was available or trucks had additional room.

This helped the company improve truckload utilization, reduce shipment frequency and make better tradeoffs between service, inventory, and transportation cost.

Too much manual analysis was happening outside Maestro because planners did not have the exception visibility they needed.

The Spinnaker SCA team designed new exception reports and alerts to proactively surface planning risks, including:

• Master data exceptions
• Substitution exceptions
• Periods of coverage
• Inter-site stock optimization
• Inventory balance visibility
• Out-of-stock risk

These errors and omissions (E&O) reports helped planners focus their attention where it mattered most, moving the team away from reactive firefighting and toward proactive planning control.

We built a custom report to give planners more flexibility in adjusting historical demand signals. The team also enabled consumption logic, allowing forecasts to be automatically reduced by actual customer demand within defined intervals. This helped reduce over-planning and created a more accurate view of demand needs.