Case studies / Home Appliances and Consumer Durables
Case studyDemand planning with dealers for an appliance maker
A home appliance maker gave its planners sight of dealer and distributor stock for the first time, improving forecasts, cutting finished-goods stock and catching a warranty problem early.
Overview
A mid-sized manufacturer of refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners with three plants in Türkiye, selling through independent dealers and regional distributors at home, in the Balkans and in the Middle East.
Scale. Some 1,400 dealers and 30 distributors, around 900 finished models built from bills of materials with up to 600 components each, delivered as a phased, multi-location programme.
The challenge
Planners at head office could see what the factories had shipped, but not what had happened next. Dealer stock was invisible. A model might be sitting unsold in hundreds of showrooms while the plant built more, or selling out in one region while warehouses elsewhere were full of it.
The plants worked differently from one another. Bills of materials were maintained in different formats, so the same component carried different codes and engineering changes reached one plant weeks before another. Warranty claims were handled by each distributor in its own way, and their cost was not linked back to the components or batches involved.
The result was a forecasting process that relied on last year's shipments plus sales optimism, finished-goods stock that kept climbing, and very little warning when a product problem emerged in the field.
The solution
Dealer and distributor stock and sell-through now feed planning every week. Planners see, by model and region, how much stock sits in the channel and how fast it is selling, so they can slow production of models that are piling up and redirect stock to regions running short.
Demand plans combine channel data with promotions and seasonal patterns, such as the early-summer surge in air-conditioner sales, and are reviewed monthly with sales and production. One bill-of-materials standard across the plants means component requirements are calculated consistently, and engineering changes take effect everywhere at once.
Warranty claims follow a common process from dealer to after-sales. Each claim records the failed component and its batch, so quality engineers can see patterns across markets. Shared master data for models, components, dealers and customers sits beneath all of it, and group reports show forecast accuracy, stock and claim costs together.
The engagement
- Nine months
- Seven specialists, with sales, planning, engineering and after-sales leads
- Process mapping, dealer and distributor stock sharing, demand planning, bill-of-materials standards, warranty claim handling, shared master data, pilot and phased rollout.
Integrations
- Plant systems and machine data
- Supplier and customer EDI
- Engineering and product data
- Group reporting
How we delivered it
- 01
Map the work across plants and channels
Six weeks
We worked with planners, plant engineers, sales managers and a sample of dealers and distributors to map how orders, stock information and claims moved. With the leadership team we agreed the scope: dealer stock visibility, demand planning, bill-of-materials standards and warranty handling.
- 02
Design common processes and build integrations
Twelve weeks
Dealers and distributors were offered a simple weekly stock and sales upload, or an EDI link for larger partners. Engineering agreed one structure and coding standard for bills of materials across all three plants. Warranty claims moved to a common process that records model, serial number, failed component and batch.
- 03
Pilot in one location
Seven weeks
The refrigerator plant and its home-market dealers went first. The pilot exposed mismatched model codes between sales and engineering and dealers who sent stock data in inconsistent units. Both were fixed while the number of partners was still small.
- 04
Roll out in waves and track results
Fourteen weeks
The other plants and export markets followed in two waves. Leadership reviewed forecast accuracy, stock and claims each month from shared reports.
Results
- Forecasts improved and finished-goods stock fell
- Teams worked from the same data across plants and markets
- A warranty problem traced to one component batch and corrected early
- Leadership reviewed results monthly
Forecasts improved markedly once planners could see the channel, and finished-goods stock fell by about a fifth within a year. The plants now adjust production weeks earlier than before, and fewer models end up discounted to clear dealer floors.
Teams across plants, sales and after-sales work from the same data. Engineering changes no longer drift between sites, and component purchasing is planned from one set of requirements.
The warranty process proved its value quickly. A rise in compressor-related claims in two export markets was traced within three weeks to a single batch from one supplier. The batch was quarantined, the supplier corrected its process, and the cost was contained before it spread across a season's production.
Leadership reviews results monthly from one set of reports rather than reconciling figures from three plants and dozens of distributors.
We used to find out about problems in the field from our dealers' complaints. Now we see them in the data, and we can act before they become expensive.
What made the difference
The client traced a spike in claims to one component batch and corrected it early. A small pilot exposed problems, such as mismatched model codes, while they were still cheap to fix.
