Override rate 22% and falling by week four

Nine years of ERP history, turned into demand forecasts, risk scores, and anomaly flags on the dispatch screens the planners already used.

Planner override rate at week four, and falling: 22%
Of ERP history profiled and put to work: 9 years
Forecast live against the real schedule: Week 4
Two builders embedded with the dispatch team: 12 weeks

The problem

A regional food distributor ran dispatch on gut feel. The ERP held nine years of order, delivery, and maintenance history that nobody queried, and the planners overrode the incumbent forecast so often it had stopped being one.

The knowledge that actually ran the schedule lived in the schedulers' heads: the exceptions, the customers who order late, the routes that slip. None of it was written down, and none of the history informed it.

The approach

Two builders embedded with the dispatch team. The first weeks went to the unglamorous part: profiling nine years of history, finding which fields were trustworthy, and learning the exceptions the schedulers carried in their heads.

The build that followed put demand forecasts, risk scores, and anomaly flags directly into the dispatch screens the planners already used. No new tool to log into, no dashboard on the side.

The outcome

By week four the forecast was live against the real schedule, with override rates tracked as the engagement's one number: 22% and falling at that point. A forecast planners stop overriding is a forecast they trust.

The same wiring surfaced problems nobody was looking for, including a supplier feed that had quietly gone stale.

Field note · Dispatch desk · Week 4

Planner override rate at 22% and falling. Two of this week's exceptions traced to a supplier feed nobody knew was stale.

The system

Regional food distributor

From gut-feel dispatch to a forecast planners trust

Nine years of ERP history held the answer. We built demand forecasts, risk scores, and anomaly flags on the data they already had, and wired them into the dispatch screens the planners already used.

Signal

Line 3 · unplanned downtime

Scrap driver: die temp > 210°C

Demand: Fri peaks +12% vs plan

Stockouts: 14 SKUs at risk

Changeover: +6 min drift since May

Failures: vibration lead, 9 days

Field note· Dispatch desk · Week 4Forecast live against Tuesday's schedulePlanner override rate at 22% and falling. Two of this week's exceptions traced to a supplier feed nobody knew was stale.

DistributionDemand forecastERP historyDispatch screensEmbed · 12 weeks

More of the work

Manufacturing · Worked scenario

A three-day, four-person question, answered in minutes

Read the case

Insurance · Worked scenario

The underwriting queue stops being first-in, first-out

Read the case

The next one is scoped from your diagnostic.

Every build starts with the same two weeks inside your operation. Tell us what's slow.