Pet Supplies Plus, a leading specialty pet retailer in the U.S., announced that it has transitioned from an all-franchise business model to one with corporate stores and consolidated its distribution centers from two sites to one. To enable the DC conversion, the company needed a new inventory management system. It chose Inventory Optimization from Cumberland-based Manhattan Associates, and following this year’s implementation, Pet Supplies Plus saw a 95 percent in-stock level, a 99 percent plus order-fill rate and then a 10 percent reduction of inventory value.
The company also lowered its overall inventory investment while improving customer service. It can now hit its desired in-stock levels and achieve inventory turns in the most profitable way, overcoming complex retail, wholesale and omni-channel inventory management challenges. Before the Manhattan implementation, Pet Supplies Plus replenished its inventories manually from a network of wholesalers. Standardizing and automating DC replenishment was a key part of the program’s success.
“The forecasting and replenishment challenges faced included merchandise categories that had fast and slow-moving items, promotions, perishables and import considerations,” said Scott Fenwick, senior director at Manhattan Associates. “The nature of the company’s business presents a high degree of inventory complexity that had to be optimized in order to achieve the maximum return on investment. Pet Supplies Plus also relies on Manhattan’s leading Warehouse Management for Open Systems, Labor Management, Slotting Optimization and Supply Chain Intelligence to run its supply chain.
“We had four main goals in deploying Manhattan’s solutions: simplify business processes, reduce inventory investment, improve order accuracy and increase labor productivity,” said Jeff Suttle, senior vice president of supply chain at Pet Supplies Plus. “The features and functions of Manhattan’s solutions are very robust and flexible. We’ve already seen big value from this investment.”
The Pet Supplies Plus case study is currently available for download on Manhattan’s website. Resources exploring multi-echelon inventory strategies and how to avoid the hidden costs associated with retail promotions are also available on the site.
For more information, visit http://ift.tt/2dyOgmW or www.manh.com.
