What is FILLRATE100?
FILLRATE100 is Software as a Service (SaaS), to make decisions of replenishment for all the SKUs at all locations in your supply chain.
it is an automation of the daily decisions, using the actual consumption as input to decide both how much to replenish and by how much to adjust the inventory levels.
If you have heard about "demand driven" or "dynamic buffer management", well this is that.
Everything started many years ago, when Dr. Goldratt, an israeli physicist, studied the flow in systems. He tested his discoveries in real cases and formulated a theory for supply chains.
The conventional wisdom was dominated (and I'm afraid it still is) by the idea of minimizing logistical cost, which leads to relatively large batches. Large batches elongate the cycle time forcing the decision makers to rely on forecasts to make decisions of how much of each SKU to replenish at each location. The longer the time, the stronger the dependency on forecast.
The only certain fact about forecast is that it is wrong. It gets worse: "best practices" also lead to variable replenishment times, which makes the system to oscillate even more. This is the origin of the surplus and the shortages in supply chains.
Dr. Goldratt focused on improving flow of goods through the whole system. His theory contradicts the main tenets of the conventional wisdom, that's why we, at Goldfish, say these are disruptive innovations.
Uncertainty is what forces to make decisions, otherwise replenishment would be determined by what it is required.
Variations on demand may be caused by random behavior of customers, or there is a trend where a product is getting more traction (or less), or there is a special event (promotions or seasonality).
FILLRATE100 does not react automatically to a promotion or to seasonality. These are known events and the manager can make decisions with this knowledge, so don't expect FILLRATE100 to solve that part. We can adjust manually the level according to what we know, and we let FILLRATE100 to keep reacting to the other two causes.
Regarding the first two, we can say random variations are the "noise" so we shouldn't react to any minimal variation. However, when there is a trend, that is a signal that we must consider to take action. FILLRATE100 distinguishes between noise and signals, so it goes adjusting inventory levels to keep the minimum possible whilst availability is at maximum possible.