Material shortages, caught before they cost a sale

For a manufacturer and distributor, one missing raw material stops every semi-finished and finished good built on top of the gap. Working with NTT DATA, the company mapped how its materials and products depend on each other and connected stock and purchase order data in one view, spotting shortages early and recovering 2.4% of lost sales.
Lost Sales Recovered 2.4%
Share of lost sales recovered by anticipating shortages.
Process Improvement 20%
Expected improvement in supply chain processes.
Integrated Visibility: E2E
Stock and purchase order data connected in one view.
Team Alignment: One Shared View.
Internal teams working from the same shortage data.
Supply chain visibility to act before a shortage hits
The manufacturer needed to see material shortages coming, moving away from a model where teams found the gaps on the production line, after sales were already lost.
Objectives
The initiative set out to mitigate unexpected material shortages across the supply chain. The ambition was to give every team the visibility and data analysis to make fast, strategic decisions and avoid major interruptions.
Opportunity
Shortage risks now show up before they reach production. With dependencies mapped and stock and purchase order data integrated into existing systems, the business spots gaps early, adjusts purchasing in time and protects sales.
Seeing shortages before they stop production

The company faced the practical challenge of discovering shortages too late, with no clear view of how one missing material affected the rest of the product range.

Key Challenges
1: Unmapped dependencies. Nobody had mapped how raw materials connect to semi-finished products and finished goods.
2: Disconnected stock and orders. Stock levels and purchase orders lived in separate systems, so no one saw the full supply picture.
3: Teams reacting alone. Each internal team responded to shortages separately, without shared data or a common plan.
4: Late discovery, lost sales. Shortages surfaced on the production line, when orders were already delayed and sales already gone.
Solution
Dependency mapping plus integrated stock and purchase order visibility

NTT DATA built the visibility and data analysis the business needed to anticipate shortages and make fast, strategic decisions.

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Mapped material dependencies

Identified the relationships between raw materials, semi-finished products and finished goods across the supply chain.

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Measured shortage impact

Evaluated how each shortage affects dependent products and production, so teams know where a gap hurts most.

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Integrated stock and purchase orders

Brought stock and purchase order information into the systems teams already use, giving one view of supply.

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Aligned sources and teams

Identified internal and external data sources and aligned every team around the same information.

Impact
A supply chain one step ahead of shortages

The manufacturer now anticipates shortages instead of reacting to them. The new approach recovered 2.4% of lost sales and is expected to improve processes by 20%. With stock and purchase orders visible in one place and teams working from the same data, every purchasing decision starts earlier and rests on evidence.

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