Supply Planning & Constraint Management

Protect service levels without solving every problem with more inventory

Special Flanges connects sales, backlog, production, purchasing and inventory across three operating companies. Operational pressure becomes visible earlier, making it easier to protect customer commitments, reduce emergency interventions and control the working capital tied up in stock.

Situation

Stay responsive without adding unnecessary stock.

Special Flanges manufactures custom-engineered forged components for more than 600 customers across approximately 90 countries. Its make-to-order model depends on flexibility, short lead times and the ability to respond quickly when demand or production requirements change. Those decisions are tightly connected. Prioritising one order affects production capacity. Increasing stock can protect service levels but ties up working capital. Delaying a purchase can reduce inventory today but create an expensive expedite tomorrow. Maintaining service therefore depends on recognising those trade-offs early enough to choose the right response.

Key challenges

See where to intervene before delays turn into expedites.

Sales, production, inventory and purchasing information was distributed across the ERP systems of three operating companies. Understanding backlog, delivery performance, stock exposure and operating cost required substantial analysis before an operational decision could even begin. Which delayed orders genuinely required intervention? Should the response come from purchasing, production or inventory? Where was stock protecting customer service, and where was it simply absorbing cash? Without one shared operating context, those decisions required repeated reconstruction and coordination across the group, reducing the time available to prevent disruption.

Solution & Benefits

Turn cross-company visibility into coordinated action.

Natzka connects orders, production progress, costs, purchases and inventory across all three operating companies. Backlog, customer service, operational constraints and stock exposure are evaluated together rather than as separate problems.

Decision Support

Make operational trade-offs visible

Sales, backlog and service levels are viewed alongside inventory across raw materials, work in progress and finished goods. That makes the consequence of each intervention clearer: where an order genuinely needs attention, where inventory is becoming excessive and where action can improve service without unnecessarily increasing working capital.

Human in the Loop

Turn exceptions into coordinated decisions

Decision logic and AI agents flag delayed orders, emerging constraints and inventory imbalances, then prioritise the situations that need attention and prepare possible responses across purchasing, production and stock. Commercial and operational owners bring customer commitments, production realities and business judgement into the final decision before the plan is adjusted. The result is faster coordination around the exceptions that matter, without automating trade-offs that still depend on customer and operational context.

The result

Special Flanges has reduced the time required for operational analysis by 60% and emergency purchases, expedites and production interventions by 16%, with first value delivered within 90 days.