High-volume supply chain case study

BT manages two large supply streams: B2C equipment and support consumables for 28,000 engineers. Earlier methods improved governance and control, but they did not deliver the required inventory and service performance.

BT first built a simulation model from 6 months of actual daily orders, then ran a 9-month pilot on one product family before moving to O8 Software SaaS for rapid deployment. The live solution launched in January 2017 with more than 147,000 individual DDMRP buffers.

The simulation showed inventory could be halved while maintaining service. The pilot reduced finished-goods inventory by 32% and cut SKUs above top of green by 43%. Availability stayed above 99% with expedites almost eliminated. Post go-live, inventory reductions typically ranged from 20% to 30%.

Planning effort and expedite costs were reduced, and supply chain performance was de-risked from forecast accuracy. The program released supply chain capacity by reducing production, buying, and storage of the wrong stock.