EYE Lighting Puts Spotlight on Inventory Planning and Management

Deploys demand planning solution from Smart Software to improve service levels for customers

Deploys demand planning solution from Smart Software to improve service levels for customers

Belmont, MA — June 29, 2006 — EYE Lighting International of North America has purchased a demand forecasting solution from Smart Software as part of an initiative to improve inventory management and to help provide higher service levels for its customers.

The company, located near Cleveland, manufactures and distributes high intensity discharge and halogen lighting products to serve the commercial, industrial, utility and retail markets worldwide. It is a business unit of Iwasaki Electric Co., a $675 million, publicly traded corporation headquartered in Tokyo.

EYE Lighting is using Smart's flagship product, SmartForecasts, which is producing forecasts that are being used by marketing and forecasting personnel at the lighting company to analyze demand patterns, as well as to plan inventory levels that are appropriate to meet future customer orders.

Smart said that the solution provides a method to import EYE Lighting's demand history and facilitates the interdepartmental sharing of system forecast results. This permits the marketing department, for example, to receive system forecasts and then adjust them to reflect changing field marketing conditions.

Besides laying the basis for a sound consensus forecast, SmartForecasts also provides EYE Lighting with accurate estimates of inventory stocking level requirements to satisfy any specified lead time and service level combination, according to the solution provider.

Robert Petti, manager of procurement and forecasting at EYE Lighting, said processes that in the past were difficult to accomplish, such as the evaluation of historical data, have been made much easier since the company installed SmartForecasts in October.

"We've learned that much of our demand is a real challenge to predict, and SmartForecasts allows us to understand demand patterns better and more quickly, which then allows us to correctly plan our inventories to accommodate the demand volatility," Petti concluded.


Additional Articles of Interest

— The world may or may not be flat, but supply chains must still stretch around the globe. Read about one high-tech manufacturer's quest to deliver near-perfect fills rates across its global service organization in "Managing a Global Supply Chain in a 'Flat' World," only on SDCExec.com.

— Best practices in returns management can help you overcome the "black hole" of the returns process. Read more in "More Than an Afterthought: Moving Aftermarket Services Forward through Intelligent Returns Management," an SDCExec.com exclusive.


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