Pyplan: Flexible, powerful planning

Pyplan S&OP is a robust platform integrating Python’s computational power and AI-driven insights, designed to enhance organisational resilience in dynamic market environments.

It empowers businesses to adapt swiftly to market shifts and evolving customer demands by offering deep analysis into operational facets like capacity, inventory management, production efficiency, and distribution channels. With Pyplan S&OP, decision-makers can anticipate bottlenecks, identify optimisation opportunities, and devise strategies to capitalise on emerging market trends.

Ahead of ASCM CONNECT 2024, CPOstrategy spoke with Odeta Pine, Product Specialist at Pyplan, to discover how the company is navigating supply chain’s evolving landscape amid the rise of technology and sustainability initiatives.

Would you be able to give me a brief introduction into the company you work for?

Odeta Pine: “The platform fosters cross-functional collaboration by creating a unified business model that transcends departmental silos, ensuring comprehensive strategic planning resonates across the organisation. By enabling stakeholders to contribute insights and perspectives, Pyplan S&OP cultivates a culture of ownership and accountability, driving collective efforts toward shared organisational goals. Notably, industry leaders like Puma, Pirelli, Nestle, and Coca Cola have successfully implemented Pyplan solutions, leveraging its capabilities to streamline decision-making, optimise operations, and stay competitive in the rapidly evolving business landscape.”

ASCM CONNECT 2024

What is the value of events like ASCM CONNECT 2024: North America? How important is this conference in the supply chain calendar?

Odeta Pine: “This event is very important for us to see the latest trends, strategies and innovative technologies within supply chain management. It is an opportunity for us to showcase Pyplan – a new python based GenAI product to the US market. We are excited to network with other peers and big companies we can learn from.”

Is there anything that makes this event stand out for you? How is it different from others you’ve attended?

Odeta Pine: “The great keynote speakers, technology companies and the great well-known companies attending.”

What are the biggest takeaways from this year’s ASCM CONNECT for you?

Odeta Pine: “Networking, education and learning about all the cutting-edge solutions and new tech start-ups.”

Global supply chain

Given the backdrop of the global disruption over the past few years (COVID, wars, inflation etc), how would you sum up where the supply chain space finds itself today?

Odeta Pine: “The supply chain right now is in a state of digital transformation and adaptation to all the disruptions. From what we have seen this year, companies are focusing a lot on resilience over efficiency by having a lot more diverse suppliers and increasing inventory levels to mitigate risks. They are focusing on increasing the EBITDA line by improving cost management given the high inflation rate and fluctuating raw material cost. Risk assessment, scenario management, sustainability and digital transformation have been key.”

What do you feel are the biggest lessons supply chains have learnt over the past few years and how well equipped is the modern-day supply chain now to deal with ‘black swan’ events like the ones we’ve seen recently?

Odeta Pine: “I think the biggest lessons learnt have been the need for agility, diversification of suppliers’, better inventory management and technology. The modern-day supply chain space has improved but it is still vulnerable to the ‘black swan’ events. Today, it is using better technologies to predict and forecast better with Python-based technologies – Python is the new and future business language. I think the most important lesson, is that it has increased awareness at the C-level which means more visibility and therefore faster strategic decision making to any sudden events.”

Sustainability

Sustainability is an important item on most Chief Supply Chain Officers’ agenda. Amid government legislation and changing customer demands, is a sustainable supply a non-negotiable in today’s world?

Odeta Pine: “A sustainable supply is non-negotiable and that is the reason we have seen a lot of new techs emerging such as GenAI tools understanding better consumer insights and trends to be able to tell organizations what is happening and what they should focus on from a demand and therefore supply point.”

In what ways have you incorporated sustainability into operations?

Odeta Pine: “Diversifying suppliers, optimising transportation logistics and real-time KPI tracking for sustainability.”

Digital transformation

Where are generative and conversational AI having the biggest impact in the supply chain? What types of supply chain and procurement decisions are now possible, or much easier to make, with the rise of AI and LLMs? How does this compare to just a couple of years ago?

Odeta Pine: “The biggest impact we see is within logistics and transportation optimisation, inventory management and demand forecasting as well as supplier relationship management. Inventory levels can better be managed to reduce overstock and stockouts. Artificial intelligence can automatically suggest reorder points, dynamic pricing based on real-time data. AI continuously monitors and updates suppliers’ data. AI in transportation and logistics have extremely improved real-time route optimisation and dynamic scheduling.”

What should CSCOs out there do first? What needs to be considered before starting the gen AI journey?

Odeta Pine: “Before a CSCO starts the AI journey, it is important to have a clear objective and use case, good clean data related to the objective and the right skilled team behind the AI projects.”

Tech-driven

What are the biggest challenges or hesitations you’re seeing companies have around AI? What should organisations look for in technology to hedge against these concerns?

Odeta Pine: “The biggest challenge is the good data, data privacy and security – companies should look for AI technologies that have a good handle on data encryption, security compliance and anonymisation.”

What are the underlying issues in how companies are currently storing and looking at their supply chain data? Why is this a problem and how can they overcome those challenges with generative AI and knowledge graphs?

Odeta Pine: “The biggest issue we see is the data quality, storage and inconsistency. Data is siloed and extremely fragmented. For any AI technology to be successful, the data needs to be good, consistent and easy to access. This is an issue because companies never really took supply chain data or any type of data seriously. On top and with the vast amount of data generated from multiple data sources anytime, this data now is so challenging, and it needs a lot of cleansing/ ETLs. Having a great data team to identify the sources, access the data, transform it, clean it and create KPI tracking reports is crucial.”

Talent management

People are a company’s greatest asset but can also be a hurdle to overcome when it comes to innovation. How do you manage the people challenge and get them on board with change?

Odeta Pine: “Communication, transparency and training throughout all teams across all departments.”

What about the next generation of talent? What is the key to encouraging more people into a career within the supply chain?

Odeta Pine: “Education and awareness are key to encouraging the next generation. Teaching young people about the global impact of supply chain in everyday life and how they can help with that is so important. Learning about technology, innovation, the importance of good data and coding languages like Python is key to having more people into a career within the supply chain.”

Future

How can the supply chain industry take that next step and what strategies can be implemented to push the industry forward even further?

Odeta Pine: “The supply chain industry can take the next steps by implementing data-driven decision making using advanced technologies for real-time KPI tracking, predictive analytics, process automation, implement AI for inventory optimisation and demand forecasting.”

Are there any exciting projects that you’re currently working on or any past ones that you’re proud of that you’d like to highlight?

Odeta Pine: “Nestlé Brazil was looking to find a tool that allowed it to automate and optimise the Demand and Production Planning process, so that it would allow users to have complete visibility both in the hierarchy of its large product portfolio (by segment, family, brand, SKU, among others), as well as by logistics points, factories and production lines. We implemented a fully automated DRP Module Distribution, Demand Planning and Production Optimization Module. The benefits achieved from Nestle: