Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated maximizes profitability

Transcription

1 Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated maximizes profitability Delivering deeper insight into customer demand four times faster with the IBM FlashSystem Solution Overview The need To capitalize on sales opportunities through deeper insights into customer demand, CCBCC needed to crunch more data without increasing time-to-insight, while meeting existing service-level agreements. The solution CCBCC deployed the IBM FlashSystem Enterprise Solution enabling it to process 20 times more forecasting data within the existing overnight window and SLAs. The benefit Delivers deeper demand insights four times faster; helps match manufacturing output with demand, reducing risk of over- or under-stocking; enables earlier logistics planning, increasing profitability. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated (CCBCC) is the largest independent producer and distributor of Coca-Cola Company products in the United States. With an annual turnover of around USD 1.5 billion, the company produces 150 million cases of product per week, which it ships from 47 distribution centers to customers across the south east of the country. To satisfy massive customer demand for its Coca-Cola Company products, CCBCC s manufacturing operations run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The company is constantly looking for innovative ways to reduce the risk of missed sales opportunities, to maximize profitability. Pinpointing customer demand As Tom DeJuneas, Infrastructure Manager at Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, explains: With operations on our scale, the ability to accurately anticipate customer demand is vital. Because our manufacturing processes are rolling 24/7, we need to refresh our demand forecasts early every morning to ensure that we re creating the optimal amount of each product, and that those products can be transported to the correct distribution center in time to fill the anticipated customer orders. If we were unable to forecast demand precisely enough, then we would be at risk of missing out on sales opportunities either because we had too little of a certain product to fill all of the day s orders, or too much of a certain product taking up valuable space in our warehouses.

2 Our mission statement is to make, sell and deliver Coca-Cola Company products better than anyone else. By using IBM FlashSystem to accelerate our insights into customer demand, we re better placed than ever before to offer unbeatable levels of service to our customers across the United States. To help predict customer demand, CCBCC uses a specialized supply chain forecasting application running on IBM AIX, the storage component of which is hosted on IBM XIV Storage System. Originally, the application offered customer demand insights down to the regional level and when an upgrade to the software that offered store-level insights became available, CCBCC was quick to deploy it. The finer the granularity of our insights, the more accurately we can anticipate demand and plan our manufacturing and logistics processes, says DeJuneas. Being able to anticipate customer demand down to the level of individual stores is a fantastic business benefit but it comes at a price. After we upgraded our supply chain forecasting application, we needed to crunch about 20 times more data than before. Large data volumes threaten efficiency With so much additional sales forecasting data to process, CCBCC s nightly batch processes began to overrun threatening to reduce the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of its supply chain processes, and to cause the IT team to miss its SLA targets. At end-of-day, we process the previous day s sales to plan production and delivery for the following morning, says DeJuneas. After the forecasting application upgrade, our nightly batch processing time grew to 14 hours. This forced us to make a choice either to delay the batch processing until all of the day s sales had been posted to our SAP ERP system, or start the batch before we had all of the day s sales data. The earlier in the day that we can schedule our deliveries, the less we pay for the service, so delaying our batch runs reduced the cost-effectiveness of our logistics processes. Conversely, if we started the batch run early, our forecasts would be based on incomplete information increasing the risk that production and delivery schedules would be based on inaccurate forecasts. 2

3 Solution components Hardware IBM FlashSystem 820 IBM XIV Storage System Software IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller IBM System Storage Easy Tier IBM AIX Services IBM Systems Lab Services Using IBM FlashSystem, we saw a significant drop in the time it took to run batch workloads. Choosing IBM FlashSystem To get the full benefits of its upgraded supply chain forecasting application and to ensure adherence to SLA requirements, CCBCC needed to reduce the time required to complete its nightly batch runs. When we heard about IBM FlashSystem, we immediately recognized its potential to accelerate our batch runs, says DeJuneas. Working with the IBM Flash Centers of Competency (CoC), we ran an onsite proof-of-concept [POC] exercise, and we were extremely impressed with the results. Using IBM FlashSystem, we saw a significant drop in the time it took to run batch workloads. Based on this positive experience, we were convinced that IBM FlashSystem had the balance of performance and price that we needed to meet our goal. Following the success of the POC, CCBCC worked with the IBM Systems Lab Services team to augment its enterprise storage landscape, based on XIV, with an IBM FlashSystem 820 with 10 TB of capacity. To ensure resiliency of its mission-critical data, the company deployed IBM SAN Volume Controller software to automatically mirror data from IBM FlashSystem to the XIV environment. The Lab Services team used IBM AIX LVM host mirroring to migrate production servers to the new storage landscape, and provided extensive skills and knowledge transfer to the CCBCC technical team. Installing the FlashSystem technology itself took just an hour or so it really is a plug-and-play solution, says DeJuneas. Even after working with IBM for more than 14 years, we are still impressed by their commitment to the success of our business. Every time we have had a need, we have been able to reach out to IBM and work with them to come up with a solution that was a win-win for our business and IBM s business. 3

4 Installing the FlashSystem technology itself took just an hour or so it really is a plug-and-play solution. By deploying the IBM FlashSystem 820 behind IBM SAN Volume Controller, CCBCC enjoys a winning mix of leading-edge performance, high availability, optimal virtualization, and extreme manageability. CCBCC also uses the XIV flash caching option to cut latency by 40 percent from 5 ms to 3 ms across diverse workloads that run on its multiple XIV machines. DeJuneas comments: Using SAN Volume Controller, we can manage both FlashSystem and XIV through a single intuitive interface. We have a lean IT team, so ease-of-use was a major advantage especially as we rolled out the new solution. Lightning-speed performance for demand forecasting With the IBM FlashSystem Enterprise Solution in place, CCBCC has achieved its goal of shrinking its customer forecasting batch cycles and meeting tough SLA requirements. Today, the company s IT department can provide the business with the rich predicative analytics insights required to improve the efficiency of its supply chain processes reducing the risk of out-of-stock or over-stock positions, and increasing profitability. After the application upgrade, our supply chain forecasting was typically completed by 8 a.m. the next morning by which time the deadline for low-cost delivery rates had passed, says DeJuneas. Using IBM FlashSystem, we ve accelerated our batch processing by a factor of four enabling us to wait for the day s sales figures to be posted and still complete the process by 5:30 a.m. He continues: Because we can now fully meet the demanding SLAs set by the business, they get timely access to the accurate information they need, they can optimize manufacturing plans and take advantage of the lowest delivery tariffs. This helps us to increase the cost-efficiency of our logistics, and ultimately boost profitability. 4

5 Even after working with IBM for more than 14 years, we are still impressed by their commitment to the success of our business. What s more, the improved accuracy of our daily supply plans enables us to reduce the amount of stock we hold cutting our inventory-carrying costs significantly. With the success of its IBM solution, CCBCC is investigating the possibility of harnessing the performance of FlashSystem to accelerate other workloads with IBM System Storage Easy Tier software. If deployed, this solution would enable dynamic, non-disruptive migration of the most frequently accessed data to the fastest storage tier. DeJuneas concludes: Our mission statement is to make, sell and deliver Coca-Cola Company products better than anyone else. By using IBM FlashSystem to accelerate our insights into customer demand, we re better placed than ever before to offer unbeatable levels of service to our customers across the United States. For more information To learn more about IBM FlashSystem solutions, contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit us at: ibm.com/systems/storage/flash/ To learn more about, visit: cokeconsolidated.com 5

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