by Guru Ananthanarayanan, Country Head, India Region, Blue Yonder
Today, cement manufacturers around the world are facing significant challenges. While demand and pricing levels remain strong, the rising costs of materials and transportation are eroding profit margins. In addition, environmental regulations, aging production facilities and a heavy reliance on manual labour are affecting production outputs in many areas of the world. As a result, cement producers need to manage their end-to-end supply chains with an incredible degree of precision, ensuring that the right materials and finished products are consistently in the right place at the right time.
The good news is that Blue Yonder, an established leader in supply chain management solutions, can help cement producers modernize both their planning and manufacturing activities via digitization. With a range of best-in-class solutions that span the end-to-end value chain, Blue Yonder is already helping many of the world’s leading cement manufacturers address their most urgent challenges ― including ACC and Ambuja Cement, Argos, and Heidelberg Cement.
Blue Yonder: Support for Three Critical Competencies
While the challenges facing the world’s cement companies are complex, Blue Yonder’s LuminateTM Planning solutions have proven their value to rapidly improve performance in three key areas:
- Creation of a single, centralized sales and operations (S&OP) plan. In today’s fast-paced world, it can be difficult for the finance, sales and supply chain teams to agree on which opportunities to chase, which customers to prioritize and other key decisions. Blue Yonder S&OP harnesses the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to quickly process enormous volumes of data from across the end-to-end value chain and identify the most profitable S&OP strategy. While the plan can be adjusted in real-time as conditions change, it provides a clear direction that everyone can agree on ― because it represents the most profitable and customer-focused course of action.
- Definition of an optimal network design. Cement operations involve dozens of moving parts, from raw materials sourcing to a multitude of processes, facilities and transportation vendors. It’s become impossible for human planners to consistently arrive at the optimal, most profitable path to fulfilling each customer’s order. Supported by AI and data science, Blue Yonder’s network design capability continuously optimizes the supply chain by considering costs, capacities, lead times, stock levels and other factors as they impact each order. Because they exceed the capabilities of human cognition, Blue Yonder’s AI-enabled solutions support the highest possible level of efficiency and cost-effectiveness, from materials sourcing to load building and delivery routing.
- Automation of production planning and decision making. One of the chief strategic obstacles for many cement companies is a strong reliance on manual labour ― not just in day-to-day production activities, but for planning and decision making. Backed by AI and spanning the end-to-end supply chain, Blue Yonder’s Luminate Control Tower identifies and addresses any anomalies or disruptions ― such as a materials shortage or plant outage ― before they impact production or service targets. In most cases, Blue Yonder’s solutions can pull the appropriate response levers autonomously, to keep operations on track with zero human intervention.
Machine-learning capabilities in Blue Yonder’s solutions support continuous performance improvements over time. By running what-if scenarios and analyzing past results, Blue Yonder’s solutions are capable of self-learning and improving their autonomous decisions, in order to arrive at better and better business outcomes.
Real Results for World Leaders in Cement
Do these results sound too good to be true? Blue Yonder has already helped many world-leading cement manufacturers achieve these and other benefits.
At Heidelberg Cement, Blue Yonder’s solutions support an end-to-end supply chain strategy that visualizes demand at the local level across 40 countries, then matches it with available capacity at a network of plants. Heidelberg achieved a significant savings via a strategic network redesign that upgraded the capacity of existing plants, instead of investing in new facilities. The company benefits from increased production flexibility and reduced transportation costs thanks to Blue Yonder.
Argos uses Blue Yonder’s supply chain solutions to support its monthly supply chain review within the IBP process in Colombia and the US. Argos also uses the supply chain solutions extensively for network design purposes such as footprint and profitability optimization for Terminals and Plants, as well as what-if scenario planning. In addition, the company uses the supply chain solutions to update its strategic long-term cement model twice a year to look for trading options, interconnectivity opportunities, and support the prioritization of capital investment in the three Argos regions (US, Colombia and the Caribbean, and Central America).
ACC and Ambuja Cement recently implemented Blue Yonder’s Luminate Planning to help the two leading cement manufacturers in India improve Sales and Operational Planning (S&OP). With integrated planning and execution, ACC and Ambuja Cement have gained visibility into daily demand, production and dispatch plan to better predict demand fluctuation, scheduled maintenance, and improve logistics and transportation capabilities. With improved supply chain optimization, ACC and Ambuja Cement are able to better align the least cost service locations, reduce delivery costs and create a service network to meet and exceed customer service levels.
These are just a few examples of the results Blue Yonder has helped deliver for global leaders in the cement industry. Backed by years of experience and a deep understanding of the cement supply chain, Blue Yonder is uniquely positioned to add value, even in today’s complex and ever-changing business environment.
Building a Brighter Future
Whatever challenge cement companies are facing, Blue Yonder has the digital solutions that can help modernize operations, create a unified vision and lay a solid foundation for future success. Typical results around the implementation of Blue Yonder’s Luminate Planning solutions include up to a 40% improvement in asset utilization, up to a 20% increase in productivity, up to a 30% one-time inventory reduction, and up to a 30% savings in logistics expenses such as expediting.
There’s no doubt that cement manufacturers face a tough competitive environment today, along with increasing costs, tighter environmental regulations and other pressures. Human planners simply aren’t up to the challenge of navigating this complex landscape alone. Blue Yonder’s solutions can help, by applying AI, data science and analytics to make optimal decisions that continuously and consistently balance profits and service ― no matter what the future brings.
