Distribution · Regional food distributor
Override rate 22% and falling by week four
Nine years of ERP history, turned into demand forecasts, risk scores, and anomaly flags on the dispatch screens the planners already used.
- Planner override rate at week four, and falling
- 22%
- Of ERP history profiled and put to work
- 9 years
- Forecast live against the real schedule
- Week 4
- Two builders embedded with the dispatch team
- 12 weeks
01
The problem
A regional food distributor ran dispatch on gut feel. The ERP held nine years of order, delivery, and maintenance history that nobody queried, and the planners overrode the incumbent forecast so often it had stopped being one.
The knowledge that actually ran the schedule lived in the schedulers' heads: the exceptions, the customers who order late, the routes that slip. None of it was written down, and none of the history informed it.
02
The approach
Two builders embedded with the dispatch team. The first weeks went to the unglamorous part: profiling nine years of history, finding which fields were trustworthy, and learning the exceptions the schedulers carried in their heads.
The build that followed put demand forecasts, risk scores, and anomaly flags directly into the dispatch screens the planners already used. No new tool to log into, no dashboard on the side.
03
The outcome
By week four the forecast was live against the real schedule, with override rates tracked as the engagement's one number: 22% and falling at that point. A forecast planners stop overriding is a forecast they trust.
The same wiring surfaced problems nobody was looking for, including a supplier feed that had quietly gone stale.
Planner override rate at 22% and falling. Two of this week's exceptions traced to a supplier feed nobody knew was stale.
The system
Regional food distributor
From gut-feel dispatch to a forecast planners trust
Nine years of ERP history held the answer. We built demand forecasts, risk scores, and anomaly flags on the data they already had, and wired them into the dispatch screens the planners already used.
More of the work
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