Mr. Lionel Dufau, Logistics Director at Cémoi, confides, ‘With the successive buyouts of companies, such as Bouquet d’Or in January 2003, as well as the diversity of industrial trades within the Group, we realized that the ERP tool we had been using for over 15 years no longer enabled us to optimize all our industrial sites ( 10 in France, 1 in Germany, 1 in England, 2 in Spain and 1 in the Ivory Coast), nor to precisely respond to the specific needs of our various trades. In our trade, encompassing every form of chocolate manufacturing, the concept of interdependence between the plants is extremely important. Thus, because of a complex Supply Chain problematic, we searched for a comprehensive, powerful and customizable planning software package, capable of going along with us in our own industrial process.’

After an initial market study, the Cémoi Group consulted in February 2003 three major players in Supply Chain Management, one of which was DynaSys, mainly for their planning feature. After comparing offers from each editor, DynaSys was retained in July 2003 for its global and collaborative Supply Chain Planning solutions: n .SKEP Demand Planning – which encompasses sales forecast elaboration; n.SKEP Production Planning – which would ensure synchronized planning of production and supply for all the plants; and n.SKEP Distribution Planning – for the optimized management of inter-site distribution. Moreover, n.SKEP Collaborative e-business will enable remote users to access to all functionalities of the n.SKEP solutions via Internet.

‘In our view, one of DynaSys’ strong points is planning, explains Lionel Dufau. We were already familiar with the SKEP Planning solution installed at the Bouquet d’Or site bought out from the Cadbury Group in January 2003, however we had high expectations for the new collaborative n.SKEP suite. It is true that in our trade we are confronted with a serious seasonal problematic and relatively heavy inter-site exchanges (chocolates can be manufactured at different plants but destined for the same box of assorted confections, for example), that require up to 6 levels of planning. The DynaSys experts very quickly grasped these concepts. That is why the power and ergonomics offered by n.SKEP, associated to the expertise and know-how, of the DynaSys team, quickly reassured us that we made the right choice.’

He also adds, ‘Launched in August, this project is being carried out in several phases: after the implementation of the production planning for the five seasonal sites of the Group, we immediately continued in January with the central sales forecasts, before following up in March with the Master Planning for distribution. We plan to conclude before the beginning of the summer, by implementing the planning solution at Cémoi’s 5 permanent sites. Thanks to the quick implementation of the n.SKEP solution, we were able to be operational very quickly. Yes, six months will have been sufficient for the seasonal project implementation! ’

‘Today, we offer a comprehensive Supply Chain Planning solution, explains Augustin Holveck, CEO of DynaSys. This enables the user an easy familiarization and competency transfer at the start of the project, since the objective is to permit our customers to then customize themselves their planning solution. Because the Cémoi Group was able to perfectly master the tool internally, it seems to have been seduced by n.SKEP, and we are pleased to witness our capacity to respond to the majority of corporate industrial processes.’

‘We feel like we’ve been heard, concludes Lionel Dufau. We hoped to develop a human-sized project and to appropriate the n.SKEP solution as quickly as possible. In this perspective, DynaSys has proved its flexibility and professionalism by adapting as needed to all our constraints. Moreover, our internal expertise permitted a great collaboration in order to proceed very quickly through the deployment of this project, which main objectives were to improve quality and to better master interactions between the different plants of the Cémoi Group .’