3. W
hen you’re already an industry champion and you’re
experiencing double-digit annual growth, where can you
look to improve? Mizuno USA is focusing on enhancing
its forecasts so that it can continue to meet the demands of an
insatiable customer base.
A Demand Solutions customer since the mid-2000s, Mizuno is a
leading supplier of sporting goods. Its baseball mitts appear on
virtually every diamond, while its golf, running, volleyball, and
soccer equipment and apparel also enjoy widespread popularity.
Because Mizuno’s portfolio encompasses about 25,000 SKUs, the
company places heavy demands on its data infrastructure. That’s
why Mizuno recently began exploring ways to go beyond its
Demand Solutions DS1 solution.
“Demand Solutions DS1 served us extremely well, but with the
amount of data we were moving, it made sense to look at increasing
the efficiency of our planning and forecasting processes,” recalls
Philippe Libert, Director of Demand Management, Mizuno USA.
IN PURSUIT OF INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING
While working on the Demand Solutions DS1 platform, Mizuno
had established demand and supply planning processes as well as
an executive sales and operations planning (S&OP) process. But
due to the company’s explosive growth, planners had created many
offline processes just to keep pace. For example, the company’s
replenishment was managed in Microsoft Excel and Access.
Preparing for the executive S&OP process is a manual task that
required two days of lead time and relied upon multiple versions
of the truth. And Mizuno managed the entire planning process
for its $50 million golf business in spreadsheets.
“Our current processes worked, but only by means of some
extremely labor-intensive efforts,” explains Libert. “We could see
that these processes weren’t sustainable enough to support Mizuno’s
growth plan and S&OP ambitions.”
Seeking to do more planning with the same headcount, Mizuno
evaluated Demand Solutions DSX in mid-2012—and realized it
had found its next solution. By September 2013, Mizuno had gone
live with DSX and moved all of its offline processes to the DSX
Forecast Management and Requirements Planning modules.
But for Mizuno, working with Demand Solutions is about more
than eliminating manual processes. It’s also about pursuing supply
chain excellence and embracing the principles of integrated business
planning (IBP). That’s why the company is among the first clients
to implement the Demand Solutions DSX Sales & Operations
Planning (S&OP) module—the latest version of Demand Solutions’
groundbreaking and longtime industry-leading S&OP platform.
Mizuno is now implementing S&OP 3.3 within planning processes—
as well as at the executive level—throughout the company.
“Our integrated system brings data from Demand Solutions
Forecast Management and Requirements Planning into Demand
Solutions S&OP,” says Libert. “That will not only save us time,
but also take our planning and forecasting processes to a new
level of completeness and accuracy and allow us to benefit from
integrated business planning.”
“INTEGRATED BUSINESS PLANNING IS ABOUT
PUTTING THE RIGHT PEOPLE IN THE RIGHT
JOBS, PROVIDING THEM WITH A COMPLETE
VIEW OF PROCESSES, AND GIVING THEM THE
RIGHT TOOLS SO THEY CAN DELIVER VALUE
TO THE ORGANIZATION. DEMAND
SOLUTIONS HELPS US KEEP STRIVING
FOR SUPPLY CHAIN EXCELLENCE EVERY
DAY BY ENABLING US TO EMBED
CLEARLYDEFINED PROCESSES IN OUR
ORGANIZATION ACROSS FUNCTIONS.”
~ Josh Creasman, Mizuno USA Vice President,
Supply Chain
MIZUNO 7
4. SINGLE VIEW OF THE TRUTH ENHANCES FORECASTING
Mizuno’s deployment of Demand Solutions DSX is enhancing the
forecasting ability of employees in a variety of roles. The company
has 3.5 full-time headcount in demand planning and 3.5 in supply
planning, all of whom use Demand Solutions Forecast Management
and Requirements Planning. In addition, two finance personnel
and seven marketing staff use DSX for a better view of the busi-
ness—and four of the company’s Canadian personnel also rely on
DSX for forecasting.
“Demand Solutions DSX is helping us bring our forecasting into
better focus,” says Libert. “Because we now have one source of
truth rather than three separate systems with different versions of
data, we have a much better sense of where our biggest challenges
and opportunities lie.”
REPEATABLE PROCESSES MEAN FASTER,
BETTER FORECASTING
With a centralized view of demand through Demand Solutions DSX,
Mizuno can now more effectively address its top business challenges
in ways that ensure customer satisfaction. Mizuno has 22 business
units, many of which operate on different business models. Although
the vast majority of Mizuno’s business comes from retailers, who
follow a traditional business model, other departments have unique
planning requirements. For example, much of Mizuno’s golf equip-
ment manufacturing is make-to-order. And Mizuno’s custom
business fills apparel orders for sports teams that require unique
color combinations and logos. After implementing Demand Solutions
DSX, Mizuno was able to customize the solution in ways that would
enable IBP in these various units.
“Tailoring Demand Solutions DSX to our
different businesses was a great learning
experience for us,” says Libert. “It forced
us to take a clear look at how we operate,
which opened up many opportunities to
increase our efficiency through IBP.”
Before going live on Demand Solutions
DSX, Mizuno’s planning process revolved
around a series of Microsoft Access data-
bases and took three days. Today, the
demand planning process happens in one
database and its translation into a supply
plan is fully automated, and refreshed daily.
In addition, month-end processing that
used to require 1.5 days, which was requiring constant monitoring
and interventions from a user, has migrated to a hands-free process
that finishes in six hours.
“For years, we built these giant databases that were highly dependent
on human involvement to keep them running,” explains Libert.
“But having dependencies like that is a huge risk to the business.
What happens when the guy who built the database quits? With
Demand Solutions, we finally have documented, repeatable pro-
cesses for generating a forecast and a supply plan.”
Demand Solutions DSX is also helping Mizuno enhance its
executive S&OP process. The company brings people from dif-
ferent functions—including sales, marketing, and finance—to the
planning table. How does the company keep them all engaged? By
providing them with a detailed package of information pulled from
virtually all aspects of the business. Putting this package together
has traditionally required considerable time and effort—a process
DSX will significantly streamline.
A SERIES OF WINS ACROSS THE SUPPLY CHAIN
As Mizuno seeks to do more planning with the same headcount,
reduce its physical assets, and eliminate dependencies between
Microsoft Excel and its databases, Demand Solutions DSX will
help deliver bottom-line value to the company.
Scaling Mizuno’s forecast used to take the company up to one full
day per business unit. Today, it’s automated, and DSX provides
recommendations on how to maximize the buying process accord-
ing to minimums. With Demand Solutions DSX, Mizuno can use
MIZUNO8
5. “DEMAND SOLUTIONS DSX IS HELPING US
BRING OUR FORECASTING INTO BETTER
FOCUS. BECAUSE WE NOW HAVE ONE
SOURCE OF TRUTH RATHER THAN THREE
SEPARATE SYSTEMS WITH DIFFERENT
VERSIONS OF DATA, WE HAVE A MUCH
BETTER SENSE OF WHERE OUR BIGGEST
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES LIE.”
~ Philippe Libert, Mizuno USA Director of
Demand Management
history to forecast at the style and color level—right down to
individual sizes and colors. “With more accurate forecasting, we
anticipate being able to reduce stock because inventory will be
more aligned with our market requirements and inventory targets,”
explains Libert.
In addition, Mizuno’s planners are experiencing much higher job
satisfaction. With so much of their previous transactional work
automated on Demand Solutions DSX, these analysts can now
focus on much more value-added work. “Our planners not only
get more done with DSX, but also have more confidence in the
data they’re sending out to other departments,” says Libert. “With
Demand Solutions DSX, we’re letting planners excel at the very
work they were hired to do.”
Bringing out the best in its planning team is a key part of Mizuno’s
plan to become a best-in-class supply chain company. In its con-
tinued partnership with Demand Solutions, Mizuno expects to
reach that goal sooner rather than later.
“Integrated business planning is about putting the right people in
the right jobs, providing them with a complete view of processes,
and giving them the right tools so they can deliver value to the
organization,” says Josh Creasman, Vice President of Supply Chain,
Mizuno. “Demand Solutions helps us keep striving for supply
chain excellence every day by enabling us to embed clearly defined
processes in our organization across functions.”
MIZUNO 9
