TXT e-solutions supports the Sales & Operations Planning of Chiesi Farmaceutici

Oct. 20, 2008 - PRLog -- TXT e-solutions, a leader in Demand & Supply Chain Management, and Chiesi Farmaceutici, an international player in the pharmaceuticals industry with 22 branches around the world and sales totalling € 656 million in 2007, disclose the first results obtained by Chiesi with the development of a far-ranging Sales & Operations Planning project involving all the Group’s branches.

The Chiesi Group has grown over time, both directly and via acquisitions. It soon reached the need for standardisation and development of an extensive process re-engineering project based on the Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) model.

As explained by Corrado Snaiderbaur, Chiesi’s Corporate Demand Manager, “Implementation of TXT was an indispensable prerequisite for S&OP. For successful S&OP,” Snaiderbaur continued, “you need systems, processes and people. Having redefined the processes, we then started involving people. We then opted for TXT e-solutions on the technological front and these have given extremely reliable support to the S&OP process we had mapped out.”

More specifically, Chiesi decided to implement – in all its branches – the TXTDEMAND and TXTPLAN solutions, which are part of the TXTPERFORM suite for Demand & Supply Management. The two solutions - now at an advanced stage of implementation – respectively support demand forecasting and replenishment planning. These are complex issues in an industry featuring regulated minimum production lots, a high number of SKUs in stock, and pharmaceutical products’ expiry risk.

“We needed a system,” Snaiderbaur added, “that would enable us to effectively manage forecasts, safety stocks, minimum orders, and products moving towards expiry date, while gaining visibility of stocks in all branches. Implementation of the two TXT e-solutions, together with our company effort on revision of processes has turned out to be a winning decision. The figures demonstrate the project’s success – so much so that in the two pilot countries (England and Germany), we have achieved an average reduction of stocks of about 15%.”

“In the forecasting process too,” Snaiderbaur continued, “we have obtained really significant results with a 22% improvement in forecasting accuracy and a 30% improvement in the MAPE (Mean Absolute Percentage Error) index.”

“A proper approach to development of an S&OP process requires achievement of the best combination of process innovation and technological solutions,” concluded Diego Maria Martini, Sales Director Italy for TXTPERFORM. “We’re delighted that adoption of TXT e-solutions, in an overall environment featuring Chiesi’s great skills and drive for innovation, is generating such important benefits for a company of this calibre. They confirm the value of the synergy of the two groups’ competences and the soundness of the TXT e-solution to support a process offering such major opportunities as does Sales & Operations Planning.”

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TXT e-solutions is an international player in Demand & Supply Chain Management software solutions based on the product suite TXTPERFORM and in Multichannel Content and Media Asset Management solutions based on its TXT Polymedia software suite.