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C A SF L 1 0 0 D E N D O R E STU V Y SHOWCASE Volpi Advances Inventory Management With Demand Solutions O n the outermost regions of St. Louis���s premier Italian neighborhood, The Hill, sits Volpi Foods, Inc., America���s oldest and most prestigious manufacturer of authentic Italian meat products. Most notable for their Salami, Volpi also manufactures prosciutto and other specialty Italian meats. Since 1902, the company has slowly matured from a one-man local business into a third generation global operation, and as innovation led to new products, Volpi outgrew their forecasting process. ���Many retailers have taken interest in our products and we have been able to grow the number of SKUs as well as the number of customers on a pretty regular basis,��� explained Adisa Kalkan, Marketing Associate. ���We���ve introduced new favors and packaging, and we also began to introduce products internationally in Canada, Korea, and Latin America. We needed a forecasting system that could handle more complexity in the supply chain.��� Volpi chose Demand Solutions Forecast Management and Requirements Planning to handle their growing manufacturing needs. Kalkan said, ���Since we���ve implemented Forecast Management and Requirements Planning, our service levels have 54 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013 ��� FOOD LOGISTICS increased signifcantly. They used to be around 80 percent, but now that we have better control of inventory on hand as well as calculated forecast needs, we are able to more accurately fulfll customer orders. Our service levels have risen to 98 percent.��� The high fulfllment rate presents Volpi with a strong advantage over their competitors. Volpi has not only increased its customer service levels with Demand Solutions, but Kalkan says their inventory management practices have allowed them to gain one full inventory turn in the past year. ���Since we have implemented the Demand Solutions Forecast Management tool, we have also reduced our expired product rate two to fve percent from what we had in the past,��� said Kalkan. When asked about creating forecasts prior to Demand Solutions, Kalkan recalls the time-consuming process of manipulating Excel pivot table data and running micros manually. ���We had to use our accounting software to create the pivot table with sales history information, then we used that information to plan the future demand. It took hours of planning,��� she explained. ���When it was all said and done, we had spent days creating a forecast that was only good for a month. Considering the amount of product we forecast for is very low, we should not have been spending so much time.��� The Forecast Management and Requirements Planning implementation took about two www.foodlogistics.com