Pet food manufacturer snaps up FuturMaster supply chain technology across globe

Royal Canin, the pet food manufacturer owned by Mars Inc., has started to roll-out FuturMaster’s cloud-based demand planning software as part of a supply chain initiative to standardise processes across the globe and improve efficiencies. The new technology, which has so far been deployed in the US, is expected to help manage the growing complexity of supplying the right products at the right time to over a hundred markets around the world.

With 3,600 different products and around 2,500 tonnes of dog and cat food being produced every day in sixteen factories worldwide, Royal Canin is able to use the demand and replenishment tool to support product availability, control inventory levels and forecast transportation needs. The $4bn manufacturer expects to improve customer service levels and deliver growth by more accurately synchronising supply with demand.

“Many of our products, often prescribed by vets, are there to cure ailments through better pet nutrition, so product availability is our obsession to secure the health of the 21 million cats and dogs we feed,” said Pascal Waller, global supply chain director at Royal Canin.

After using FuturMaster’s planning software in France for the last twenty years, the cloud solution will be deployed in over twenty markets over the next three years - the US was first to be launched in June 2018, followed by Australia early in 2019.

“We chose FuturMaster’s cloud solution as we wanted to be able to deploy it quickly and easily across the organisation and because of Mars’s group strategy to move all applications to the cloud,” said Waller. “We like the flexibility and free maintenance and updates from a cloud set-up.”

Jared Hayton, head of logistics and customer care at Royal Canin USA, said that double-digit (16%) annual growth and rising demand for specialty pet food products has made managing the supply chain increasingly complex in a constantly changing environment:

“We’re virtually doubling our capacity, after adding three plants in the last three years, so FuturMaster delivers us the automated supply and demand management capabilities all in one system, so everyone’s in total alignment and sharing the same data.”