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HOW NOVOLEX CONTAINS ITS TIMELINES

Faster, better planning during turbulent change


When restaurants, grocery stores or food suppliers suddenly change their plans,
food packaging leader Novolex must be ready to adapt.

But Violeta Nedelcu, Supply Chain Director at Novolex®, was struggling with the
time it took to coordinate the company’s multiple locations and various systems.
“We had a very big gap between the sales plan and the production plan,” she
says.

The company followed an annual planning cycle where the sales and operations
team finalized sales forecasts, budgets and needs for the upcoming fiscal year.
With multiple plant locations and ERP systems, some sites reviewed forecasts
quarterly, some twice a year. Overall, the process was lengthy.

“It’s really hard to say whether it was six weeks or three months, because it
was different from site to site,” Nedelcu says. “We did not have up-to-date
information to make sure that sites were producing enough volume without
producing inventory unnecessarily.” Nedelcu saw that the lack of current data
also affected raw materials planning, production floor scheduling, machinery
capacity and inter-plant logistics.




FASTER FORECASTING

 

Supply chain forecasts 83% faster



INVENTORY SAVINGS

 

Excess inventory 16% saved

We had a very big gap between the sales plan and the production plan. Violeta
Nedelcu Supply Chain Director Novolex


FINDING THE RIGHT FIT

To address its challenges, Novolex began by consolidating its various
forecasting processes into one strategy. This model would serve as the basis for
a consistent review, forecast and update process. With this unified forecast,
the company could complete a full production plan on a monthly basis, projecting
inventory and planning other activities for the business and its suppliers.
Next, the company needed a software solution to support the process and a
partner to help implement the solution successfully.

After assessing potential solutions, Novolex selected the IBM® Planning
Analytics powered by TM1® solution because of its readiness to connect the
company’s various systems onto one platform. Novolex selected IBM Cognos®
Analytics software to provide monthly and weekly site-level Simple Network
Management Protocol (SNMP) reporting for engineering, marketing, sales and
operations.

To implement the solution effectively, Novolex needed a partner that understood
both the technology and the business. “It’s very important that the developer
understands manufacturing, and understands the business overall, to be able to
work alongside the business,” Nedelcu says. “So, instead of getting a system
where you need to adapt the business around it, you get a system that is adapted
to your business needs—one that makes sense for the users.”

Novolex called upon IBM Business Partner Converge Technology Solutions Corp. to
help bring its vision to life. “By having someone from IBM available, through
Converge, to check in and address the questions that came along with
development—we definitely haven’t had an issue or a roadblock where we didn’t
have a solution,” Nedelcu says.

“The challenge was that their budgeting process didn’t have one platform or one
tool where everybody had eyes on the same thing,” says Jeff Wong, Account
Executive at Converge. “Everybody was just submitting versions of spreadsheets,
and they had to populate the numbers manually. It went through multiple
iterations before they could budget and plan for next year.”

Novolex worked with Converge to resolve process bottlenecks, standardize metrics
and ensure the optimal system design for deployment and adoption. With the
solution in place, the benefits have steadily grown.

I’m a planner at heart—and I’m very proud to implement something like this.
Violeta Nedelcu Supply Chain Director Novolex


DELIVERING AGILITY

With steady deployment and adoption across the company, the new solution reduced
the six-week forecasting process to less than one week—an 83% reduction, even
amid changes.

“One of our goals from the very beginning was to address the capacity,” Nedelcu
adds. “This year, we’ve been able to improve our inventory position by about
16%.” That means the company is able to support the business with 16% less
inventory than it maintained a year ago—especially notable in a year when food
service turbulence has seen both grocery gains and restaurant losses.

“Having this tool, we are very quick to assess where we have available capacity
and to address the current market needs,” Nedelcu says. Instead of taking weeks,
the company can now process data within a few hours, taking two days for
analysis, discussion and review, and provide clarity on the available capacity
to proceed with new products and to support the current market.

“Plus, sites have a consistent way of getting the information, and they know
exactly what to build. So, there are efficiencies in terms of building the right
product and having the right inventory on the floor,” Nedelcu says. “Having the
visibility means being able to make better business decisions and understanding
what’s required from a capital investment perspective. And we’re able to give
them that, that visibility of what is available and what we can or can’t
support.”

Nedelcu adds that “the ease of implementation, in phases, helped get engagement
from the users—it wasn’t a scary thing. Converge has definitely made the road
easier. We’ve received all the support that we needed.”

“I’m a planner at heart,” Nedelcu says. “That’s what I’ve done all my career,
and I’m very proud to implement something like this—to get everyone in the
business that I needed to give their approval to continue on this journey.”

And by embarking on this analytics journey, this food packaging leader managed
to navigate this turbulent year with ease. Novolex can now receive an accurate,
timely view of what is happening at any given time through the IBM Cognos
descriptive analytics capabilities. IBM Cognos also yields clear prescriptive
analytics, recommending the best course of action when facing dynamic demand.

Now, Novolex is taking the final step. Since Nedelcu’s supply chain team has
become the company’s trusted authority on forecasting metrics, the team plans to
expand upon the system. The next phase would be to add in predictive analytics
that consider a wider range of factors, provide more detailed forecasts and help
clarify how the company needs to prepare for the future.

“Change happens every day, as we all know,” Nedelcu says. “But with the most
recent pandemic, I can tell you that if we didn’t have the new process and a
system to support it, I would have had a tougher time.”




ABOUT NOVOLEX

Novolex (link resides outside of ibm.com) develops and manufactures packaging
and foodservice products for multiple industries ranging from grocery, food
packaging, restaurant and retail to medical applications and building supplies.
With more than 10,000 employee families, Novolex operates 61 manufacturing
centers and administrative offices in North America and Europe, including two
world-class plastic film recycling facilities.

About Converge Technology Solutions Corp.

IBM Business Partner Converge (link resides outside of ibm.com) is a hybrid IT
solution provider that delivers advanced analytics, cloud, cybersecurity and
managed services offerings to clients across various industries. Founded in 2016
and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Converge has an annual revenue of USD 688
million with more than 800 employees at locations around North America.

Solution components IBM® Cognos® Analytics IBM Planning Analytics powered by
TM1®
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FOOTNOTES

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2021. IBM Corporation, Analytics, New Orchard Road,
Armonk, NY 10504

Produced in the United States of America, March 2021.

IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, Cognos, and TM1 are trademarks of International
Business Machines Corp., registered in many jurisdictions worldwide. Other
product and service names might be trademarks of IBM or other companies. A
current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and
trademark information” at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.

This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be
changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in
which IBM operates.

The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative
purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific
configurations and operating conditions. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS
PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY
OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the
terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided.


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