Poultry manufacturer modernizes demand and supply planning with large-scale ESP deployment

The Challenge

A major U.S. chicken, turkey, and pork processing company that harvests more than 500 million chickens a year and operates nearly 20 plants, 60+ distribution centers and freezers, and 40+ copackers across the country needed to modernize its demand and supply planning solutions. 

The manufacturer faced several challenges, including replacing and enhancing aging Manugistics Demand and Fulfillment solutions that were running on life support. It also needed to strengthen its demand planning capabilities by leveraging Demand 360 for consensus forecasting. In addition, the business required a constraint-based supply planning solution that respects customer-specific shelf-life requirements for fresh and frozen products, accounts for capacity and material constraints, and integrates operations across the east and west coasts. 

The Solution

Highspring led the implementation of JDA Demand, Demand 360, and ESP across the enterprise. The team partnered with IT to define interface requirements, map data, conduct systems integration testing, and guide user acceptance testing—laying the groundwork for a more responsive and integrated planning process. Highspring also supported end-user training and knowledge transfer to ensure a smooth transition. 

Given the unique requirements of large-scale poultry processing, the implementation needed date-sensitive inventory functionality within ESP, which had never been done before. To meet this need, Highspring developed a customized approach that calculated pounds of harvested birds by individual meat cuts. This capability is critical for determining available raw materials and their expiration dates. 

Highspring also collaborated with Blue Yonder to enable inheritance and propagation of shelf life within the bills of material. This ensures each SKU reflects the correct expiration date—whether it inherits shelf life from raw materials or receives a new date once produced.

Our Impact

The engagement resulted in the manufacturer’s first successful large-scale deployment of ESP with date-sensitive inventory inheritance in the poultry industry. The organization also improved its forecasting process by leveraging Highspring’s Demand Core and enhanced supply planning capabilities with exception-driven ESP process flows. JDA was integrated with SAP MRP for more connected planning and execution, and a foundational framework was established to support future improvements, including logistics integration, feature availability, and advanced order promising. 

With the new date-sensitive inventory functionality, the manufacturer can accurately calculate minimum shelf-life and expiration dates across more than 35,000 SKUs, identify products that need immediate sale, reduce planning errors, and improve product reliability and safety.