With a turnover of 180 million euros and about a thousand employees, the Ampafrance group is the current European leader in child care products (car seats, buggies, prams, high chairs, playpens, etc.). With a European presence through its subsidiaries in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain and Portugal (50% of its turnover is realized outside of France), Ampafrance merged at the beginning of 2003 with the Dorel group, international manufacturer of consumer goods, specialized in child care products and home furniture. Thanks to this acquisition, the Dorel group became worldwide leader in child care product sales.

‘Our activity on the European market has experienced a significant increase over the past years, marked by an even more fluctuating market demand and a speeding-up of new product launching,’ explains Vincent Badonnel, Forecast and Planning Manager at Ampafrance. ‘However, one of Ampafrance’s major assets is its ability to react very quickly to the customers’ demands, thanks to an inventory management of the majority of its products. On the other hand, the diversification of the production and supply sources, and their even longer lead times make it more difficult to maintain the rate of service expected by the markets. To reconcile these irreconcilables, we had to improve our sales forecasts.’

He also adds, ‘In our profession, each new year reflects a new collection. For each line of products, such as the buggies, we sometimes decline up to 20 different colours for each model. Since we are always on the lookout for new tendencies, it has become essential for us to anticipate the success of a product, but more importantly to control and manage all steps of the product's life. Equipped with a sales forecasting tool for over 10 years, we came to the realization that this tool in state no longer conformed to our performance objectives, and that it became crucial for us to find a solution that fits our specificities closely.’

After an initial market round, Ampafrance consulted six Supply Chain Management specialists in February of 2003. Three of these were then pre-selected, one of which was DynaSys. As a result of the selection process, DynaSys came out the winner.

‘We have chosen DynaSys for several reasons,’ comments Vincent Badonnel. ‘First of all, this editor had been able to assimilate the entire scope of our problematics: the DynaSys team managed to understand very quickly the importance of our collections’ renewal, which constitutes 90% of our references each year. Benefiting from qualitative information was a determining element in the orientation of our strategy. Another criterion for our choice was the ergonomics of the n.SKEP Demand Planning tool, its powerful modelling as well as its collaborative capabilities of validating forecasts between forecasters and subsidiaries. Lastly, we appreciated the pre-sale involvement of the DynaSys team, who was able to give us a concrete and precise idea of what the n.SKEP tool was like, with a high-quality prototype!’

‘Rich in functionalities, the new n.SKEP Demand Planning tool was designed to foster real-time planning by several users of our solution, explains Ariel Weil, General Manager Assistant of DynaSys. Demand and production planning can indeed be carried out simultaneously by several collaborative users located at the same or separate sites, such as for Ampafrance, all of this within a work environment where data is calculated in real-time, and where information sharing is executed in a quick and secure manner.'

In conclusion, ‘The initial problematic was clearly defined, and we were confident that our n.SKEP tool could respond to the imposed requirements, using its basic functions. Thanks to the numerous functionalities of our solution, we can offer Ampafrance the means to better master its forecasting quality, which is a key point to improve the monitoring of its supply chain.’

It is finally to be noted that in continuing the project, Ampafrance foresees to implement the n.SKEP Distribution Planning solution from DynaSys in 2004, for a centralized planning of its several distribution sites (DRP), in order to coordinate the product flows across the entire logistic network.