TL;DR
- 81% of manufacturers experienced excess inventory from planning and execution misalignment in the past 12 months, per LeanDNA's 2026 Wakefield Research study.
- Most multi-site manufacturers have inventory sitting at one plant while buyers at another plant are purchasing duplicates. Reducing inventory starts with seeing what you already own across the network, not with cutting safety stock at every site.
- Documented results from companies that built cross-site visibility into their daily workflow:
- 50% inventory reduction at Modine focus plants
- 36% excess inventory reduction in 3 months at Safran Seats GB
- 27% excess inventory reduction at Daher.
The cost of duplicate inventory
For most manufacturers, reducing inventory is on the CFO's quarterly priorities list and has been for years. The standard playbook is some combination of safety stock cuts, supplier consolidation, and pressure on buyers to hold less.
Our 2026 study of 150 senior decision-makers at global discrete manufacturers found that 81% of those manufacturers experienced excess inventory in the last 12 months as a result of planning and execution misalignment.Our 2025 study of 200 U.S. manufacturing leaders found that 81% have not fully synchronized their supply chains across sites.
The excess inventory most manufacturers are carrying is not the result of buyers being too cautious. It is the result of buyers at different sites making locally rational decisions with no view of what the rest of the network already has on the shelf.
The fastest path to reducing inventory is not lower safety stock. It is visibility into the inventory you already own.
The problem: where inventory hides in multi-site organizations
In a single-plant manufacturer, every buyer can see every shelf. In a 10-plant manufacturer, no one can. The data exists, but it lives in a different ERP instance, a different site's spreadsheets, or a different planner's head.
Three patterns can show up in multi-site supply chain organization carrying excess inventory:
- Site-level optimization beats network-level outcomes. Each plant's buyer is rewarded for keeping their lines running, not moving a part from Plant A to Plant B. Cross-site data exists but is not trusted. When a buyer in Mexico sees inventory listed in a Memphis system, the first question is "is that real or is it allocated?" Without a single source of truth across sites, the answer can take three emails and a phone call. The buyer defaults to ordering.
- The same part is ordered under different part numbers. Decades of acquisitions, ERPs, and naming conventions can leave multi-site manufacturers buying the same physical part under several SKUs. Reducing inventory starts with knowing the part is the same in the first place.
Stop buying parts you already own
Swetha Reddy, Vice President of SIOP and Materials at Duravant, shares her perspective on the benefit of seeing all the data:
"As a buyer, LeanDNA is the one tool where you can open up at a part number level. You're looking at the data. You're seeing what's on hand and then you're seeing what you need. Plus, you're seeing what's on hand at a different operating company. Then you're making a decision right away. ‘I'm going to get that over from there versus going and getting at a higher cost.’ Those types of insights driving impact on the bottom line is something pretty cool to see happen."
Duravant runs multiple manufacturing operations across food processing equipment brands. Reddy's team built a workflow where, before a buyer places an order for a part, the system surfaces every site that already has the part on hand. The information was always there. The buyer just could not see it at the moment of the decision.
APEX, LeanDNA's factory-first AI platform, is built specifically for this work. It reads every site's ERP, normalizes the part data across SKU variations, and shows the buyer what already exists in the network before they hit submit. The reduction in purchased inventory is not theoretical. It is the order that did not get placed because the system showed the part was already on the shelf in another plant.
Daily decisions need a single source of truth
Cross-site visibility is not a one-time data integration project. It has to live inside the daily buyer workflow, or the buyer defaults back to what they can see. Elena Rodriguez, Global SIOP and Materials Director at Flowserve, runs supply chain across a global flow control manufacturer with sites spanning multiple continents. She describes the importance of a daily workflow built on a shared view:
"We have lots of decisions and we have different ERPs. Having LeanDNA gives us the opportunity to have connections and visibility to different sites. Having the opportunity to see [cross-site data] and make decisions on a daily basis is very powerful."
Most multi-site manufacturers have technically integrated their inventory data. Far fewer have integrated their workflow like Flowserve. The result is that the data sits in a dashboard nobody opens, while the actual buy decisions are made on the local view the buyer has had open all morning.
A tool like APEX changes that by surfacing the cross-site context inside the buyer's existing screen, at the moment of the buy decision. The buyer does not have to navigate to another tool. The information comes to them, in the workflow they already use.
Reducing inventory through cross-site visibility is a competitive advantage
The financial case for cross-site visibility is not subtle. Manufacturers carrying excess inventory are carrying working capital that could be funding equipment, plants, or product development. Per our 2026 study, 77% of manufacturers report pressure from leadership to improve capital flow. Inventory is one of the largest pools of capital a manufacturer controls, and it is the one most directly under supply chain's influence.
Ruben Estrada, Director of Integrated Business Planning at Terumo BCT, frames the discipline this requires:
"The opportunities to optimize inventory have been significant. We have been able to leverage LeanDNA to actually optimize our inventory. We have more fiscal discipline around our raw material inventory controls."
The reduction does not come from a single project. It comes from changing the default. When the buyer's default tool surfaces existing inventory before allowing a new buy, the cross-site discipline becomes structural. When it depends on the buyer remembering to check, it does not.
The competitive advantage is not abstract. It compounds. Every quarter that cross-site visibility is in place, the network drifts toward a lower inventory baseline, and the working capital that used to sit on shelves is funding the next investment.
How to start reducing inventory through cross-site visibility
1. Build a single inventory view across all sites before you cut safety stock
The instinct to lower safety stock at every site is rational but risky. Without a network view, lowering safety stock raises stockout risk. With a network view, the same lower safety stock is offset by what is sitting at a sister plant.
2. Normalize part data across SKU variations
The same physical part can be ordered under several SKUs across sites, especially in companies that have grown through acquisition. Without normalization, the system cannot show the buyer the cross-site availability of the part they are trying to buy.
3. Use ABC and XYZ classification to prioritize where the dollars are
Not every part justifies the cross-site coordination cost. Use ABC and XYZ classification to identify the parts where cross-site duplication is most expensive (high dollar A items) and most likely (X items with stable demand).
4. Build the "before you buy" check into the buyer workflow
The cross-site view has to be inside the tool the buyer uses every morning. If it is a separate dashboard, the buyer will check it on day one, week two, and month four, and never again. Platforms like APEX surface cross-site inventory inside the buy workflow at the moment the order is being placed.
5. Measure network inventory turns, not just plant-level turns
Most multi-site manufacturers measure inventory turns by plant. Measuring network inventory turns can result is buyer behavior that optimizes for the network, not the plant.
Proof: companies that reduced inventory through cross-site visibility
The case for cross-site visibility is built in numbers, not in theory:
- $80M working capital reduction at an international aerospace manufacturer, achieved by surfacing existing network inventory before allowing new purchase orders.
- 50% inventory reduction in focus plants at Modine, where cross-site coordination became the buyer's default workflow.
- Johnson Controls scaled from 4 to 40 sites on the same platform, with each new site inheriting the cross-site discipline from the start.
- 36% excess inventory reduction in 3 months at Safran Seats GB along with improved inventory accuracy and on-time delivery.
FAQs
What is the fastest way to reduce inventory in manufacturing?
The fastest way to reduce inventory in manufacturing is to build visibility across all of your sites before cutting safety stock at any single site. Most multi-site manufacturers carry excess inventory because buyers at different sites make locally rational decisions without seeing what the network already has on hand. Per LeanDNA's 2026 Wakefield study, 81% of manufacturers experienced excess inventory in the last 12 months from planning and execution misalignment. A cross-site visibility layer that surfaces existing inventory at the moment of the buy decision is the highest-leverage move for reducing inventory without raising stockout risk.
How does cross-site visibility help with reducing inventory?
Cross-site visibility helps with reducing inventory by showing buyers what is already on hand across the network at the moment they are placing a new order. Most multi-site manufacturers have technically integrated their inventory data, but the data lives in a dashboard that buyers do not check during the buy decision. A decision layer that surfaces cross-site availability inside the buyer's existing workflow eliminates the duplicate purchases that drive most excess inventory. Documented results include 50% inventory reduction in focus plants at Modine and $20M savings in 90 days at a global aerospace manufacturer.
How much inventory can manufacturers typically reduce with better cross-site visibility?
Manufacturers that have implemented cross-site visibility typically see 20% to 50% reductions in purchased or excess inventory within 3 to 12 months. Reported results include 50% inventory reduction in focus plants at Modine, 36% excess inventory reduction in 3 months at Safran Seats GB, and 27% excess inventory reduction at Daher. The variance depends on how fragmented the existing data is across sites and ERPs, and on how quickly the discipline is built into the buyer workflow.
Conclusion: the inventory you already own is the easiest to find
Reducing inventory is not a single project. It is a structural change in how a multi-site manufacturer decides what to buy. The manufacturers who get the most working capital out of their networks are not the ones with the lowest safety stock. They are the ones who built a cross-site view into the daily buyer workflow and stopped buying parts they already owned.
The cost of not doing this work is paid every quarter, in working capital sitting on shelves at one plant while buyers at another plant are placing orders. That cost in the inventory line of the balance sheet and the working capital metric the CFO reports to the board.
Want to see how APEX gives your team a single cross-site view for reducing inventory? Book a demo.
