How can demand influencing techniques and practices help AGC Glass Europe in improving its service level and its inventory management? Implementation of a recommender system
Files
Daubie_46451200_2017.pdf
Closed access - Adobe PDF
- 42.76 MB
Details
- Supervisors
- Faculty
- Degree label
- Abstract
- Alignment between the different strategies of a company is sometimes complicated. This thesis takes the example of AGC and analyses the processes used to align strategies but also the issues in this field. Some inventory and service issues are raised and a creative solution is proposed: the implementation of a recommender system in the sales order process to propose alternatives in case of availability problems. Recommender systems are often used in a B2C environment but this thesis presents an adaptation of the existing recommendation techniques in a B2B environment. This adaptation is done with one objective: influencing the demand to improve the service quality and the inventory management of AGC. This thesis is divided in three parts. First of all, the current situation is analysed with a quick introduction of the company in Chapter 1 followed by an overview of the products and their features in the second chapter. Finally, a presentation of the order fulfilment processes and information flows of the company is proposed in Chapter 3. The second part defines the problem situation. Chapter 4 studies the alignment between the strategies of the sales, planning and operational departments and the related problems. From this study, the fifth chapter suggests a solution regarding the raised issues, within the demand management area, and deduces the research problem of this thesis: How can demand influencing techniques and practices help AGC Glass Europe in improving its service level and its inventory management? The solution is also introduced with its objectives, constraints and opportunities. The last part deeply presents the chosen solution: influencing the demand thanks to the implementation of a recommender system in the order process. Chapter 6 studies the existing literature about recommender systems and confronts it to AGC’s situation to determine which techniques could be used in our case and how they should be adapted. We then move on to the concrete implementation of the tool in Chapter 7. The last chapter eventually emphasizes the change management aspect of this project and develops the key elements for its success.