Mizuno: Pursuing Perfection With Collaborative Forecaster

Sporting Goods Manufacturer Mizuno implement sofco’s Collaborative Forecaster as part of wider business strategy to Pursue Perfection.

“The difference between something good and something great is attention to detail”. Mizuno, a part of the Mizuno Group, primarily engages in the manufacturing and marketing of sporting goods. Founded by two brothers, Rihachi and Rizo, over one hundred years ago, they support sporting activities by offering better sporting goods but also developing products and services that make the most of the value of sports, and actively spread that in daily life.

Through continuous improvement they have been Pursuing Perfection Since 1906.

Why sofco?

sofco was selected as a key solution provider due to the level and extent of support that could be provided with a series of cloud based Managed Services and Demand Planning to deliver the best outcomes for their European operations. Due to the range and End-to-End nature of the sofco suite, in addition to the main selection of Demand Planning, Mizuno were able to wrap around other supporting services to get the maximum benefit from the solution.

The Challenge

Mizuno’s requirement was to achieve high levels of supply security for saleable end items and to support the continuation of repeatable demand patterns from the past onto future items. In addition, they needed to support Product Structures for a high turnover of SKU numbers in the Apparel industry and aggregate & disaggregate demand at the most appropriate levels through Products, Markets and Customers.

The solution had to integrate with the Mizuno ERP system for customers, sales, items & forecast and be the basis for Distribution Requirements Planning. An intuitive user interface was key and the solution had to be an integral part of the company S&OP process by feeding relevant data to their management dashboard.

The Solution

The Collaborative Forecasting solution for Mizuno is hosted by sofco where their remote users and stakeholders access the application from a web browser to receive, review and update forecasts as required. These forecasts are then automatically updated back to the Demand Planning solution where internal Demand Planners can review and assess the changes. Consequently, no external users are accessing the internal Forecasting application as all exchanges are at a database level only.

Via the Collaborative Forecaster portal, distributor collaboration is possible to be able to publish the current range and forecast by SKU, by distributor.

In addition, the primary Demand Planning project allowed best fit statistical forecasting for continuity products, split to size, with collection rounding. This facilitated the output to JDE to drive DRP. Coupled with the introduction of full range management functionality, Mizuno have greatly benefited from the implemented solution and continue to do so.