Company: Hartz Mountain Corporation
Website: www.hartz.com
Industry: Consumer Goods Manufacturing/Pet Supplies
Technology Platforms: Oracle Enterprise Information System

 

Hartz Mountain Improves Forecasting-Process Efficiency by Nearly 50 Percent

Headquartered in Secaucus, New Jersey, Hartz Mountain is a well-known manufacturer and distributor of high quality, clinically-proven pet products and supplies. The $400-million company produces approximately 2,000 finished items, sold through a variety of retail, wholesale and direct sales channels, including the nation's largest pet superstores, discount and grocery chains.

As Hartz’s Eric Rosenbaum explained: “To sustain our market-leading position, we needed to gain greater visibility of our own internal supply chain, and monitor our customers' inventories more closely in order to keep their shelves adequately stocked to meet seasonal and promotional demands.”

With these goals in mind, Hartz set out to find a best-in-class, technology-based forecasting and demand management solution. After evaluating several forecasting solutions, the Hartz team determined that the Demand Management Engine, a core component of John Galt Solutions’ Atlas Planning Suite, provided the best match with their criteria.

“With its powerful algorithms and high level of automation, the John Galt Demand Management Engine provides the ability to run ‘pro-forma’ forecasts that we can adjust and fine-tune, depending on the situation. Even in the earliest stages, this capability alone resulted in significant time and labor savings,” Rosebaum said.

“The visibility we have achieved with the Demand Management Engine is quite amazing,” added Rosenbaum. “The new system has definitely improved our forecasting and demand planning, allowing us to do more in less time and with fewer resources. In fact, I would estimate that we have improved our forecasting process efficiency by at least 50 percent.”

By adopting more real-time forecasting and replenishment strategies, Hartz Mountain has embraced one of the key tenets of lean manufacturing – substituting information for excess inventory – which, over time, can prove to be quite a profitable strategy. As Rosenbaum observed: “Supported by John Galt’s advanced forecasting technology, timely information costs a great deal less.”