Founded in 1874, the house of Piaget holds a special place inside the luxurious clock and Jewellery Manufacture. It is one of the few completely integrated clock making Manufactures creating, developing and producing its own balance wheel, its boxes and watch bracelets on both of its production sites based in Switzerland.

Strengthened by manpower of 600 people, the Piaget Brand is available in the whole world mainly thru its 14 subsidiaries in charge of the watch and jewellery distribution within 40 exclusive Shops and of 820 points of sales. The watchmaker jeweller became the symbol of an elegant and daring way of life.

Tradition, innovation, know-how and creativity are the catchwords of this Brand which since the year 2000 had made its business model evolve in order to gain in performance and to improve its customer’s service level, by improving the management of its stock."In the past, we worked using the “back to back” methods in order to satisfy our orders. We were subject to the production lead time towards the increasing pressure and requirement of customers demand entrusts Mr. Christophe Grenier, Director Finances and Operations of the Piaget Brand. Since then, Piaget has in the first place set up a centralized sales forecast system which enabled him to accompany the growth that the Brand underwent these last years. “The time has now come, after the installation of a new, younger and motivated team, full of initiatives to unify, make more reliable and professionalize our processes and our tools and to give the means of effectively collaborating with the various actors and the first concerned the people on the field".

Three major problems are put forward. First of all, a rapid and constant renewal of the range of watches (more that 100 new models launched every year), which requires a perfect management of the products life cycle. Moreover, top-of-the-range products with very high unit value represent an offer often lower than the demand, but which requires a perfect distribution flow management. At last, a long production lead time (several months are necessary between the order and the product delivery).

After having consulted 3 major key players of the Supply Chain market, Piaget decided, in May 2006, to adopt the DynaSys collaborative solutions, n.SKEP® Demand Planning, to manage sales forecast and n.SKEP® Distribution Planning for the coordination and optimization of product flows through the whole distribution network.

“In the first place, what we were looking for in the product was its performance, user-friendliness, durability, ergonomics and integration with our ERP SAP, stresses Christophe Grenier. Our choice was directed towards the DynaSys n.SKEP tool for several reasons: the functionalities and ergonomics of n.SKEP; its DRP deployment rules which are easy to be parameterised and intelligent ; the possibility of filing and comparing various simulations, such as sales forecasts or deployment stocks around the world; the possibility to export from Excel and to benefit from product pictures on a whole range of product and many references . And finally, a rather original element, that of being able, thanks to n.SKEP, to calculate a reversed MRP, thus allowing to forecast what we can produce from an existing stock of rare and critical components ".

Three phases will be necessary to the deployment of the DynaSys solutions. Firstly, the deployment of Demand Planning and Distribution Planning solutions will be centralised (by the end of March 2007). Secondly, a deployment at the subsidiaries level. At last, the deployment of the n.SKEP® Planning Production tool for the strategic and tactical production planning (S&OP and MPS).

"The given support of the DynaSys team was very appreciated by the whole Piaget Supply Chain team, delighted Christophe Grenier. We were given the feeling that our needs and problematic were very quickly and very well outlined by the team. We are convinced that our common values will enable us to go very far in our collaboration ".

"We are very proud of having been selected by the Piaget company with which we have built from the very start a truthful partnership with the fundamental common point of a long term co-operation", concludes Augustin Holveck, CEO of DynaSys.