Gaea Global Technologies

In the current environment, Consumer Electronics companies are challenged with bringing innovative products to market and effectively cannibalizing the sales of their old products without losing market share. This tremendous pace of innovation usually results in a proliferation of SKUs and ECOS to their existing products.  These companies usually reach their market by either selling direct or through retail or through distributors or a combination of these, resulting in a complex channel management problem.

Most of the consumer electronics companies have their manufacturing done by low cost EMS manufacturers in ASIA and have them direct shipped to their customers or internal distribution centers. The latest trend is to even outsource the design of new products to the emerging ODMs. Brand Management and Customer Service are very critical for this industry. There is a direct correlation between the brand and margins in this industry. Hence customer relationship management and marketing are very important for this industry 

Given the complex supply chain and channel structure, balancing the supply and demand across the ever increasing number of SKU/locations is a very challenging problem. This industry is moving to more of a consignment model where the inventory is held on the Consumer’s Electronic companies books till it is sold. In the context of the above mentioned trends, the consumer electronics companies in order to nimble and efficient have to increase the visibility of inventory across the value chain starting from its supplier all the way through its channels to the end customers.

Hence, the supply chain processes in consumer electronics companies have unique characteristics that need to be addressed while implementing supply chain solution. Gaea understands these requirements in depth and has incorporated sophisticated strategies to solve these requirements while implementing supply chain solutions for consumer electronics companies.  

Unique planning requirements of a consumer electronics company include:

Demand Planning

Demand Planning enables you to predict and shape customer demand more efficiently. Advanced statistical capabilities combined with market knowledge gained from internal and external collaboration bring pinpoint accuracy to your demand plans.

• Ability to forecast a new product based on the history of a similar product and model products that will be cannibalized due to the introduction.
• Ability to incorporate the POS from retailers and distributors and generate a forecast based on the POS.
• Ability to incorporate price elasticity calculated from the previous promotion while planning the future promotions.
• Ability to build casual models to represent competitor’s strategy while generating forecast.
• Ability to assimilate the various forecast information from the various departments – Marketing, Sales, Customers (Retailers, Distributors etc), Operations and finance and come up with a consensus forecast.
• Ability to perform fast aggregation (bottom-up) and allocation (top-down) demand planning, while supporting allocation and aggregation of forecast at all the levels.
• Track the forecast accuracy at SKU, DC level.

Supply Planning

Supply Chain Planning offers a comprehensive solution for collaborative strategic, tactical, and operational planning, helping your company synchronize demand and supply, while opening systems to collaboration with customers, suppliers, and outsourcing partners. Sales and operations planning is integrated with execution, making it possible to adjust to unforeseen events in real time.

• Reduce the latency between production plan, distribution plan and procurement plan by running a single holistic plan that models the entire supply chain.
• Ability to perform a closed loop planning by feeding back constrained supply to the sales and operations planning process.
• Optimizing the supply plan based on trade-off between customer support and margins.
• Establishing the correct postponement strategy based on demand, supplier LT and manufacturing variances.
• Design the supply network taking into bottom-line and top-line into account.
• Collaborating effectively with suppliers and channel partners and get visibility across the value chain while planning.
• Incorporate strategic and tactical material and resource constraints – Ex:- strategic sourcing constraints and detailed shop floor scheduling.

Gaea understands these requirements of Consumer Electronics companies very well and can quickly model these into your supply chain system implementation resulting in a successful and smooth implementation.

For additional information on how we can help you with either an assessment of your current Supply Chain systems environment or implementation/extension of your supply chain system, please contact us.