It involves planning at the different areas of the value chain while taking into consideration historical performance and gaps to target.
To reliably plan the output of the value chain, the variability of every individual process has to be accounted for. This variability makes daily stock forecasting unreliable over long periods of time, having downstream impacts on shipping and can result in high demurrage costs, which are fees payable to the chartered ship owner if ships are not loaded or discharged within the time agreed. Sales’ adjustments cannot be done in the short term and require a 2+ month line-of-sight to adjust the vessel lineup.
A vessel lineup aligned with inventory availability has the potential to identify opportunities or extra sales and minimise demurrage costs. Order of magnitude of the impact of this CAPEX-free project is measured in million $ per year, that is a ten-fold return of investment in the first year.