In the fast-moving frozen foods industry, especially where summer demand can skyrocket fivefold, precise timing isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s survival. The Magnum Ice Cream Company, operating in a market with a complex distributor network, faced the ultimate challenge: how to replenish over 1,000 SKUs to 130+ distributors daily, serving 200,000+ local customers, while keeping products cold, customers satisfied, and logistics costs under control.
With sales volumes surging dramatically between May and September and a product line that includes some of the most beloved frozen treats in the region, this company needed more than guesswork or gut feel. It required a synchronized planning engine that could outsmart the heat, the volatility, and the complexity, without missing a beat (or a scoop).
200K+
Customers
130+
Distributors
1,000+
SKUs
The Planning Puzzle
- The company needed more than just daily replenishment decisions or vehicle routing. They required a synchronized, intelligent planning system that could: Anticipate future demand and pre-ship accordingly
- Reduce the number of mixed pallets that include different SKUs to make picking and packing easier and faster in the warehouse
- Ensure balanced inventory distribution while honoring distributor capacity constraints
To tackle this complexity, they partnered with Solvoyo for an end-to-end planning transformation.
The Solvoyo Solution: Optimization in Action
Solvoyo’s platform integrated seamlessly with the manufacturer’s SAP and other execution systems, incorporating real-time operational data along with planning constraints captured via Solvoyo’s user interface.
Key planning inputs included:
- Distributor inventory snapshots
- Daily demand forecasts
- Target days of cover provided by the planning team
Minimum and maximum cover levels are generated using Solvoyo’s Distribution Requirements Planning (DRP) solution, which simulates annual transportation flows to account for distributor capacities, overflow warehouse needs, and warehouse in/out operations. These simulations dynamically update weekly inventory targets per distributor-product pair, aiming to identify pre-shipment opportunities, improve truck utilization, and reduce mixed pallet ratios.
Once replenishment quantities are calculated, Solvoyo’s vehicle routing module kicks in. Pre-defined route logic, mixed pallet ratio targets (6–8% during peak), and cold-chain constraints are all factored in to produce optimized, feasible transportation plans—without sacrificing cost or service levels.
Notably, during peak periods, pallet quantities are rounded to full layers, reducing handling time at warehouses nearly tenfold.
Tangible Results
With Solvoyo’s synchronized replenishment and transportation planning:
Time Spent Planning Was Cut to One-Third: Service and logistics teams reported a 3x reduction in planning time in 2024 compared to earlier years.
Higher Product Availability: Target inventory levels were consistently achieved without overloading the network.
Lean and Efficient Transportation: Vehicle utilization improved, mixed pallet ratios declined, and loading time dropped significantly.
All this while enabling user overrides and seamless pushback into SAP through Solvoyo’s Transport User Interface (TUI)—empowering planners without compromising automation.
Final Scoop
Whether you’re managing ice cream or inventory, planning in seasonal environments isn’t for the faint of heart. But with the right optimization tools, even the most temperature-sensitive supply chains can operate like clockwork.
Solvoyo’s platform helped this frozen foods leader turn their planning into a synchronized symphony, melting away inefficiencies, one truckload at a time.
About Company
Magnum is a globally recognized, premium ice cream brand distinguished by its iconic chocolate-coated ice cream bar on a stick. The brand’s portfolio include a wide range of sophisticated flavors and formats, establishing itself as a leader in the premium ice cream segment worldwide.
Achievements
3x Reduction in Planning Time in 2024 compared to earlier years.
Higher Product Availability without overloading the network.
Improved Vehicle Utilization with reduced mixed pallet ratios and loading time.
Don’t take our word for it
80% of IT tools investment fails if the partners don’t strive to continuously improve and adapt. That is what sets our partnership with Solvoyo apart.
With Solvoyo, we eliminated spreadsheets from the process and simultaneously increased process speed and planner efficiency across all regions.
Solvoyo’s S&OP platform gives both the regions and the HQ the ability to maintain a supply plan harmonized with demand and inventory investment targets. We now identify supply plan discrepancies proactively. Along the way, we eliminated Excel from the process and simultaneously increased process speed and planner efficiency across the enterprise.
We see rapid changes in demand, and when the inventory is short, we adjust our production plans accordingly. The adjustment requires a lot of manual work, causing suboptimal plans and inefficiencies on the production site. With Solvoyo’s optimized plans, not only do we make easy and smart decisions but also respond to any rapid change at the speed of the market.
Demand planning is both art and science. Until we collaborated with Solvoyo, we managed our demand planning process as a form of art, relying only on individual intuition backed up by the primitive science of spreadsheets. Now, we are finally in a position to make real-time decisions fed by all sorts of data.
