Family-owned consumer brands manufacturer and distributor to improve their forecasting accuracy and reduce manual work, while gaining visibility and control into end-to-end inventory.
Berner Oy, established in 1883 and managed through four business areas and subsidiaries in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Baltics, has chosen RELEX Solutions, provider of unified supply chain and retail planning solutions, to renew their demand and supply planning capabilities. Berner manufactures and imports a broad selection of well-known consumer good products in several categories as hygiene, groceries, home care, wellbeing, leisure, childcare, daily accessories, and beauty, including Herbina, LV, Nuxe, Clarins and Kikkoman.
Before collaborating with RELEX, Berner had two separate legacy solutions for demand forecasting and purchasing to warehouses. The end-to-end demand planning process required a lot of manual work and was lacking system support, for example, in optimizing slow moving inventory or purchases prior price increases. In addition, order coordination to multiple suppliers and ordering on certain days was done manually.
Berner chose RELEX to get better visibility and control of end-to-end inventory and supply chain planning, and to automate processes. With RELEX demand and supply planning capabilities Berner will optimize inventory, be able to coordinate orders to multiple suppliers and ordering on certain days automatically, alleviate manual inventory transfers between warehouses and purchase goods before price increases, saving on the price of goods.
This level of automation and optimization will support Berner on achieving their goals for the project, which are focused on:
- Improving forecast accuracy and profitability
- Maximizing capital efficiency, reducing inventory costs and reducing material spend
- Reducing manual work
“Our collaboration with RELEX is critical to our supply chain strategy,” says Juha Starck, Head of Supply Chain at Berner. “We aim to develop our supply chain and do that sustainably, underpinned by RELEX demand and supply planning capabilities. Our values and purpose go together, and this was important for us when making the decision to work with RELEX.”
“It is exceptionally humbling to get to work with a customer with such a long history,” says Jukka Uskonen, Vice President of Sales at RELEX Solutions. “I am pleased that Berner has chosen us to do our part in ensuring that their impressive story of 140 years continues for the decades to come. With our demand and supply planning solution, we will provide Berner with better visibility to and control over end-to-end inventory, leading to efficiency, profitability and automation.”