Leveraging Coty’s value stream ambitions

November 19, 2019

Over the past few years, leading cosmetics company Coty has been reevaluating its planning process at its Ashford plant in South-East England to bring it in line with value stream optimization principles and assure compliance with the company’s SAP ERP platform. OMP helped to redesign the process and put in place a comprehensive planning and scheduling solution with seamless SAP data exchange processes. The solution significantly increased Coty’s capability to efficiently manage assets.

Reshaping planning processes boosts efficiency

Coty produces no fewer than 7,000 cosmetic products at four factories globally. The almost 15,000 SKUs involve more than 6,000 different components, subassemblies, bulk products and raw materials. At Ashford, Coty took the opportunity of a recent ERP rollout to reevaluate its planning process. “This was a must-have improvement to our ERP solution,” says Akil R. Lile, Director of Planning at Coty. “We recognized we needed breakthrough planning capability, and OMP delivered that.”

About Coty

Coty Inc. is a multinational beauty company founded in 1904. With its subsidiaries, it develops, manufactures, markets, and distributes fragrances, cosmetics, skin care, nail care, and hair care products. It owns around 77 brands. The company has approximately 20,000 full-time employees in 46 countries.

Next level planning

Various planning systems and solutions were evaluated and compared before they chose OMP as strategic partner to take the planning process to a higher level of maturity. “We had good reasons for this,” explains Adam Dunworth, Planning Manager at Coty. “As a planning solution, OMP clearly outperforms other systems, just based on its ability to transform planners into decision makers. OMP also provided tailored services to help us redesign our planning processes. They have in-house expertise in how the consumer goods industry works and the challenges we face with our fast-moving product lines, the disruptive impact of promotions, and the interdependence of bulk and finished goods manufacturing.

Reduced stock levels, shorter lead times and avoiding waste

OMP implementation dramatically improved Coty Cosmetics operational planning and detailed scheduling. Akil Lile: “The new solution allows us to run our scheduling every day, with capacity planning integrated, and this speeds up how we respond to demand changes. It also gives us a clear view on bulk item and critical component availability, and automatically alerts us if there are issues or conflicts. We can even optimize the usage of older components."

"The solution also fully integrates with packaging line scheduling, which we now run just in time without the need for large stocks of bulk product. And the intelligent scheduling automatically minimizes setup times and means we can plan campaigns by shade, by format, or by product family. All this allows us to reduce inventory levels, shorten lead times and avoid waste.”

“With all the built-in intelligence, the solution allows our planners to focus on what really matters, and that is adding value.”

Akil R. Lile, Director of Planning at Coty

Efficient cross-team communication

Leveraging Coty’s value stream ambitions Superior planning performance then, but what about integration with the SAP ERP platform? Xavier Rodriguez, responsible on the IT planning system, says: “SAP integration was indeed crucial, because it was decided at corporate level to keep most of the master data in SAP ERP. And OMP has a certified SAP connector, allowing seamless data flows in both directions.”

“Transactional data such as stock levels, sales and purchase orders, purchase requisitions, deliveries, and returns are all continuously interfaced from SAP. OMP plans and schedules are uploaded to SAP on demand. This makes for very efficient communication between the planning, manufacturing and purchasing teams.”

Focus on adding more value

The planning project led to significant performance improvements at Coty Ashford. For example, customer service improved by more than 5%, supply chain costs and waste levels dropped more than 10%, and capacity utilization is more stable and more predictable.

"The solution automatically alerts us if there are issues or conflicts, and we can even optimize the usage of older components.”

“And don’t forget planner efficiency. With all the built-in intelligence, the solution allows our planners to focus on what really matters, and that is adding value. Mission accomplished,” concludes Akil Lile.

A centralized planning hub serving four plants

Following the successful OMP implementation at the Ashford plant, Coty decided to roll out OMP across its entire Color Cosmetics division, which includes three other manufacturing plants, two in the United States and one in Spain.

Adam Dunworth explains: “As a matter of fact, the rollout happened after the merge with the former Procter & Gamble Beauty brands, which made us twice as big a company, with a much more complex supply chain and tougher planning challenges. Merging the best of Coty and Procter & Gamble practices, we decided to centralize all master planning at Ashford, while scheduling is done locally at each site. This smart organization around the Ashford Planning Hub and the use of OMP as an integrated planning solution has dramatically improved coordination of planning across plants, with great benefits in terms of efficiency, cost reduction, and resource usage.”

Leveraging Coty’s value stream ambitions

“OMP used its in-house expertise on the workings of the consumer goods industry to help us improve our planning processes.”

Adam Dunworth, Planning Manager at Coty

About OMP

OMP helps companies facing complex planning challenges to excel, grow and thrive by offering the best digitized supply chain planning solution on the market.

Its Unison Planning^TM concept has a unique approach. It handles all supply chain planning challenges in a unified way, synchronizing all planning stages, horizons, functions and roles. From source to deliver. From strategic to operational planning. From leadership teams to schedulers.

Hundreds of customers run OMP’s cloud-based solution to generate more value by making informed decisions. Valued as a thought leader by experts as Gartner, OMP invests one out of every three dollars earned into innovation.

Project details

OMP was implemented at the Color Cosmetics division of Coty. Features implemented include:

Daily operational planning, including capacity planning of finished goods lines and bulk batch vessels, real-time availability check of bulk items and critical components, phase-in-phase-out planning and the capability to quickly and easily run multiple planning scenarios.
Detailed scheduling, running just-in-time production, avoiding storage of bulk products in the warehouse, and making use of intelligent sequencing and campaigning solvers.
SAP integration, including integration of all required master and transactional data.