Wickes Home Improvement

Travis Perkins is first in UK to deploy Barloworld SCS's CAST Aurora Software

[UKPRwire, Mon Jun 27 2011] The Travis Perkins Group has become the first UK company to deploy the new CAST Aurora supply chain network modelling software, from Barloworld Supply Chain Software (SCS).
The leading builders’ merchant and home improvement retailer has employed Barloworld SCS’s CAST software for over five years to help optimise its supply chain network, and has now upgraded to the recently launched CAST Aurora, a software package that is said to help companies achieve typical savings of 10-15% within their supply chains.
The Travis Perkins Group comprises 18 businesses including Travis Perkins, Wickes, BSS Pipeline and Heating Solutions, PTS Plumbing Trade Supplies, City Plumbing Supplies, Tile Giant and Toolstation, and its supply chain operation services the daily requirements of more than 1,850 retail and distribution sites across the UK.
“Accelerated investment in CAST Aurora allows us to maximise the benefits the software can bring to our Group and puts us at the leading edge of supply chain design in the UK,” says Richard Horton, Transport Development and Planning Manager, at The Travis Perkins Group.
“Previously you had to present candidate depot locations for the software to consider, but the latest developments to CAST enable us to identify the required number of locations, their ideal position geographically and timings revolving around their opening.” Richard adds.
CAST is a well-established decision support software application, which is used for supply chain modelling, strategic network design and optimisation. New CAST Aurora offers even faster and more complex modelling capabilities, as Fraser Ironside, Head of Strategic Modelling at Barloworld SCS, explains.
“Technological developments have helped to enhance the software’s capabilities. Scenarios that previously may have taken hours to run through the software can now be carried out in minutes, in a single sitting” says Fraser, explaining that users can now try more scenarios, more regularly.
A key feature delivered by the new CAST Aurora, is the multi time period function, which enables companies to not only identify the ideal location for warehouses, for example, but also the ideal times to open and close warehousing facilities. It also considers seasonal peaks and falls in demand and supply. “CAST Aurora can flex capacities in the network and tactically size resources by time period” Fraser says.

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