PING Enhances Supply Chain Planning with IoT

PING is a US-based golf equipment and gear manufacturer with assembly operations in the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom, among other locations around the world. The company works with suppliers in Vietnam and China. PING has been innovating the golfing world for over 60 years, ever since its founder, a General Electric engineer, crafted putters in his garage based on an innovative design. PING pioneered the practice of custom-fitting each club to suit the owner's body type, swing style, physical strength, and personal preference.

PING, a leading golf equipment manufacturer, faced a significant challenge in managing its supply chain due to the high level of customization it offers. The company custom-fits each club to the owner's body type, swing style, physical strength, and personal preference, resulting in over 7 million possible specification combinations for its irons alone. This complexity, coupled with the need to pre-build finished goods based on projected orders, created a profound manufacturing and supply chain planning challenge. Additionally, PING had to accommodate changing player preferences and trends in playing styles. The company's existing planning process, which relied heavily on Excel, was unable to handle the volume of SKU configurations or exploit the value of real-time sell-through information from retailers.

To address these challenges, PING collaborated with John Galt Solutions to define a new, automated process that integrated smoothly into the company's ERP system. The Atlas Planning Platform from John Galt Solutions enabled PING's 24-month rolling forecast model to respond more quickly to changes. The platform provided a global view that linked demand and supply, facilitating a shift from a stage-gate process to a more agile one that used daily data to collaborate closely with suppliers on maximizing global production capacity. The Atlas platform also helped mitigate the effects of global supplier disruptions, enhancing all levels of the planning process, from high-level model forecasting to SKU/BOM forecasting, assembly planning, and integration with the company's MRP system.

• The implementation of the Atlas Planning Platform has driven a range of enhanced value for PING. By digitalizing their global supply chain operations, the team can now look beyond orders and retail shipments to detect patterns, sense evolving customer behavior, and perform insightful what-if scenario analyses. This allows them to 'ride the demand wave' while staying one step ahead of potential bullwhip effects. They can also take maximum advantage of sales and demand data, exploit highly granular ABC segmentation, and create more precise and nuanced attribute-based product plans. Furthermore, they plan to reduce overall levels of excess safety stock and obsolete inventory to cut carrying costs. The Atlas platform is helping PING project the spirit of its innovation across all sales channels, from traditional retailers to online-direct, distributor networks, and major accounts.