Key Results achieved by the nVenia team:
- 21% decrease in overall inventory dollars
- $2.5M reduction in capital investment
- 39% increase in inventory turns
About nVenia, A Duravant Company
nVenia, a Duravant Company, is a packaging equipment manufacturer supplying integrated primary, secondary, and end-of-line packaging solutions focused on quality, durability, and innovation. Their expertise as packing machine manufacturers includes conceptualizing, designing, manufacturing, installing, integrating, and servicing packaging equipment.
The Challenge
As an Engineer-to-Order (ETO) business, nVenia operates in a high-mix, low-volume environment where demand is rarely consistent. Managing inventory for such a complex operation was a monumental and manual job. The team was tasked with overseeing tens of thousands of active SKUs within a system containing 700,000 total records.
To make this data manageable when doing ABC / XYZ and min/max analyses, the team had to apply heavy filters, which restricted their visibility to only "on-hand now" and "consumed in the last year" inventory. This meant they were often guessing what they needed to stock to meet evolving customer needs.
The processes used to determine service levels and safety stocks were manual, time-consuming, and lacked standardized control:
- Manual Analysis: Weekly ABC/XYZ analyses took roughly an hour, while monthly min/max calculations required two to three additional hours.
- Lack of Standardization: Although the team utilized min/max calculations, the absence of a centralized system meant that anyone in the company could manually change these numbers.
- Untrustworthy Data: Because there was no uniform calculation method, the operations and supply chain teams couldn't reliably explain the math behind their numbers, making it impossible to establish a trustworthy, standardized safety stock policy.
The nVenia team found themselves in a position where it was unrealistic to stock one of everything, yet they lacked the data-driven clarity to know exactly what they should be stocking to satisfy customers without tying up millions of dollars in excess inventory.
The Solution: Inventory Optimization in the APEX Platform
To overcome the manual hurdles, nVenia started using Inventory Optimization, a capability in the APEX platform by LeanDNA. APEX Inventory Optimization replaces static formulas and fragmented manual approaches with pattern-specific calculations that adapt to each item's unique demand characteristics. The result is a standardized, prescriptive Plan for Every Part (PFEP), where teams know exactly where each safety stock recommendation came from and can explain the reasoning behind it. That standardization eliminates the uncertainty of competing manual methods and gives teams the confidence to align inventory decisions with both service level requirements and working capital goals.
The feature is essentially a simulation environment for pressure-testing safety stock and order policies, where supply chain analysts input specific parameters for their business, and it calculates optimal safety stock, order policies, and inventory targets accordingly. There are configuration decisions that shape those recommendations that fall into four main categories of “levers” users can pull.
- Demand levers: Set the time frame and quarterly weighting for demand calculations. These parameters determine how APEX accounts for variability, frequency, trends, and seasonality, the foundation of every downstream recommendation.
- Safety stock levers: Set service level targets by item category and apply coverage caps to balance inventory investment with service level requirements, striking the right balance between carrying costs and stockout risk.
- Order policy levers: Choose to resize existing policies or evaluate alternative ones. The latter weighs demand pattern characteristics, lead time variability, and supplier performance to identify and recommend the best policies for each item.
- Override levers: Assign different rules to specific parts to capture real-world constraints, so recommendations stay prescriptive without losing sight of how your operation actually runs.
Inventory Optimization in Practice
The adoption of the Inventory Optimization feature was driven by the inherent nature of nVenia’s business, which involves a low volume and high mix of parts and tens of thousands of active parts to track. A specific problem the feature helps address is that approximately 80% of their parts fall into the bottom-right corner of a 9- or 12-box categorization. The 12-box feature in APEX is particularly helpful in providing a more granular breakdown, such as distinguishing between intermittent and sporadic demand for CZ parts, which helps in setting appropriate service levels.
Inventory Optimization allowed for a greater scope of parts to be analyzed much faster compared to the previous manual process the team followed. The calculations provided by the feature are more robust and offer a deeper dive into the data, including capabilities like Monte Carlo simulations, which were not feasible manually.
“Inventory Optimization has helped with time and efficiency. The calculations I’m doing now can be much more complex. We have much better information and can deep dive into the data with more accuracy.” - Jason Wegner, Data Analyst II at nVenia
By integrating Inventory Optimization into their workflow, nVenia replaced a fragmented, manual process with a more transparent approach, a system where the math is reliable, the data is real-time, and the strategy is standardized across the entire organization.
Measurable Results: Operational Efficiency and Financial Impact
With a new standard strategy in place, the results were reflected in the team’s daily workflows as well as the progress towards company-wide goals.
Changes in the work life of the supply chain team:
- Elimination of Manual Analysis: The team reclaimed 3–4 hours for every analysis that were previously lost to manual ABC/XYZ and min/max calculations.
- Reduction in Buyer Messages: The new safety stock and order policies implemented improved the quality of the data that the procurement team was working with, so the system was finally providing the right answers and reducing the need for constant manual intervention and clarification.
“Inventory Optimization gave us the ability to have a uniform system when it comes to safety stock. Before, anyone could change the numbers in our system. Now we have parameters set so we have reliable math behind our safety stock decisions.”
The nVenia team had a goal to increase working capital and reduce inventory. Within the last year as they’ve worked toward that goal, Inventory Optimization has supported their efforts to unlock capital that was previously tied up in excess inventory:
- 21% Decrease in Overall Inventory Dollars: This optimization resulted in an estimated $2.5M reduction in capital investment.
- 39% Increase in Inventory Turns: nVenia is now moving product significantly faster, indicating a much healthier and more responsive supply chain.
- Significant Total Inventory Reduction: By identifying and clearing out data noise and slow-moving stock, the team streamlined their entire footprint.
The successful implementation of the Inventory Optimization feature in APEX transformed nVenia’s operation from a manual, guesswork-driven system with tens of thousands of active SKUs, into a standardized and transparent, data-backed supply chain. By establishing a uniform calculation method for safety stock and eliminating the risk of unauthorized manual changes, Inventory Optimization provides the reliable computation and simulation necessary for high-performance inventory decisions. Through this data-driven strategy, nVenia successfully unlocked capital, streamlined their entire inventory footprint, and established a responsive supply chain ready for future growth.
Interested in implementing Inventory Optimization? Speak with one of our experts, or learn more here.
