CONTEXT

Business sector: Agrifood

Business expertise: Optimizing industrial production

OBJECTIVES
  • To optimize production efficiency – avoid stock-outs without resorting to overstocking
  • To regulate the rocketing pace of production volumes and catalogue item numbers (high diversity)
SOLUTION

Eurodecision’s SCOP Capacity Planning software integrated into the BRIDOR IT system

RESULTS

•  Shorter customer response times, particularly for exports
•  Production projected to deal with peaks in demand
•  Enhanced anticipation of equipment maintenance, shift management (public holidays, vacations, etc.)
•  Time saved in short- and medium-term production planning
•  Scheduling rules shared between planners; new hire training made easier
•  More direct details to facilitate schedulers’ work

For over twenty years, BRIDOR’s premium quality and consistency criteria have driven its constant and substantial growth. We got to the point where we had to upgrade our planning/scheduling software to make it more responsive to changes in processes with, for example, additional chains and allergen constraints. Because BRIDOR is a highly innovative company, be it in creating new products for our customers or industrial processes, we were keen to find a partner that would assist us over the medium term. This is what prompted us to work with Eurodecision
Benoît LOGEAISIndustrial Director - BRIDOR

BRIDOR specializes in the industrial production of frozen bread and morning goods, baking 4 billion croissants, brioches and other puff pastries per annum. Its top-of-the-range finished goods are sold to bakeries, hotel and mass retail chains in over 100 countries.
Solid mutual trust developed between the BRIDOR Industrial Team and Eurodecision after two successfully completed forecasting and network design assignments. So, BRIDOR was unreserved about approaching the artificial intelligence and supply chain experts to co-develop a solution around a capacity planning engine to improve production planning over a three- to six-month horizon.
As it happens, given the surge in the number of production lines, volumes, increasing item numbers with their associated constraints (allergens, myriad streams, and so on), the teams were finding it increasingly hard to organize production and storage capacities to cope with orders (because of personnel and also materials-related constraints). They wanted an innovative tool at their fingertips that would let them automate and optimize their planning processes while factoring in all the existing constraints.

Eurodecision initially held workshops to ascertain the sector-specific teams’ needs and expectations, before starting work on a prototype from actual pastry production data. The results analysis validated its approach, backing the decision to acquire the applied mathematics-based capacity planning solution. Eurodecision’s engineers integrated all BRIDOR’s specific planning constraints, from human resources (e.g.: the number of people allocated to a task, tough working conditions, etc.) and production (e.g.: adhering to production rates, restricting the use of one line for a single product, post-production machinery cleaning after products containing allergenics substances, etc.).

Now BRIDOR has been using SCOP Capacity Planning since the fall of 2019 to plan production at its two plants, i.e., 11 pastry production lines and 5 bread production lines. In order to present an optimized production plan, the tool gathers daily data on the orders to be processed, sales forecasts, manufacturing orders and maintenance operations planned on the equipment over the planning horizon. Planners can send instructions to the schedulers for the items to be produced per week and per line, after analysis, making adjustments as required.

The SCOP Capacity Planning platform improves BRIDOR’s control over its planning/scheduling process, and contributes to reducing stocks. This makes for real time savings, and offers better visibility of production planning with greater flexibility for production cycle changes. The many indicators provided make this an outstanding decision-making tool. It also performs simulations to examine the impact of a decision on production planning, which will be particularly useful when BRIDOR’s third plant opens. New features will soon be added to the solution to fine-tune supervision of production.

BRIDOR – key figures:

  • 2 plants in France (8 sites across the globe)
  • 2 plants in France (8 sites across the globe)
  • 2019 sales: 750 million euros