Brewer Improves Logistics with Single View Across Breweries

“We’ve been very happy with Analytics8.  To be honest, we couldn’t be happier.  We were never able to explain- with data- the root cause of our performance issues. We had too much data, in too many different systems and not enough people with knowledge to analyze the data timely.  With our new analytics solution, we now spend our time on fixing the issues instead of trying to understand what happened.  We’re more productive, more effective, and our performance & financial KPIs are reflecting that.”

– Chris Honstain, Director, Warehousing & Distribution Asset Management

The Problem: Manual Reporting and Inconsistent Views

The Tier 1 logistics division at Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) is responsible for warehouse and transportation logistics, which includes tracking shipment targets for 12 breweries across the nation. The data to measure their KPIs comes from multiple data sources, so warehouse teams would extract data into MS Excel and Access to make business decisions. This manual method of performance measurement created several issues for them, including:

>>  A time-consuming reporting process that required a dedicated team of analysts

>>  The risk of missing shipments due to system downtime

>>  The necessity of human users to be logged in for some jobs to run

>>  The lack of historical context due to system and software sizing constraints

>>  Inconsistent, complicated reporting across breweries

>>  Not giving users actionable information throughout the day because of infrequent reporting

The Solution

Working with AB InBev, Analytics8 implemented a comprehensive data and analytics solution using Qlik Sense.

>>  We built a data staging layer to capture historical information across all 12 breweries to give context when measuring performance.

>>  We built a dimensional data model in Qlik Sense that combines data from all 12 breweries and allows KPI analysis to be done in a consistent, governed manner via a single analytics application.

>>  We also conducted dashboard design sessions with the business team to understand their root cause analysis process for missed targets, and then designed dashboards that clearly illustrate KPI performances.

How AB InBev is Now Working Smarter

The new analytics solution at AB InBev enables business users who are not highly trained in logistics to identify issues and make data-driven decisions faster, more consistently, and more reliably. Data gathering now takes minutes, instead of days, giving them more time for problem-solving. With consolidated historical data across all breweries, they can easily identify patterns over time and traverse multiple metrics by their common dimensions (products, carriers, breweries, employees, and time). Additionally, the solution we built gives corporate deeper insight into company performance by allowing them see data across all breweries in one view.

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