Business Impact of Kingspan's Supply Chain Transformation

• 15% improvement in on-time deliveries through proactive order tracking.

• 10% reduction in working capital tied up in raw materials.

• 20% cut in emergency procurement costs via early SKU risk detection.

  
  

The Challenge Kingspan Faced

Kingspan, a global leader in insulation and building materials, encountered significant challenges in managing its supply chain operations. This complexity arose from multiple plants and hundreds of SKUs.

Key Issues Included:

• Fragmented ERP exports that provided no single view of open orders, overdue deliveries, or stock levels.

• Limited forecasting capabilities to assess whether incoming orders exceeded available stock.

• Lack of visibility into financial exposure, such as capital tied up in raw materials versus finished goods.

• Plant managers lacked trend insights, making it difficult to balance production and procurement across sites.

  
  

This fragmented reporting slowed decision-making and increased the risk of stockouts, order delays, and inefficient working capital utilization.

Our Solution: A Unified Reporting Suite

To address these challenges, GrowthBI developed a centralized Power BI reporting suite. This solution unified Kingspan’s order, inventory, and valuation data. It empowered plant managers, finance, and supply chain teams with real-time, drill-down insights across four purpose-built dashboards.

Dashboard Walkthrough

1. Open Orders Dashboard

This dashboard provided a consolidated view of Total Open Orders, overdue volumes, and on-hand orders. Users could drill down from Scheduled Date → SKU → Plant to identify where delays accumulated.

Power BI Functionality Used:

• Hierarchical drill-down from Year → Month → Week → Day.

• Dynamic slicers for Plant, Product Technology, and Material Group.

• What-If Parameters to model target lead times.

  
  

Business Value: Improved visibility for sales and production teams to anticipate late orders and act early.

2. Inventory Dashboard

This dashboard displayed closing stock levels across all plants (Winchester, Rockford, Mendota, Miami) with week-on-week trend tracking. It showed SKU-level breakdowns of top contributors by FT² and stock value.

Power BI Functionality Used:

• Time intelligence for week-on-week comparisons.

• Plant-level trend charts with drillable time filters.

• Conditional formatting to flag declining stock levels.

  
  

Business Value: Enabled managers to balance production loads across sites and align with forecast demand.

3. SKU Weekly Report

This report delivered a detailed SKU-level operational summary: Stock as of date, Overdue Orders, Predicted Stock, Invoiced Quantities, and Urgency Flags. It automatically highlighted SKUs at risk of running negative within 7–14 days.

Power BI Functionality Used:

• Custom DAX measures to forecast stock based on demand and open orders.

• Color-coded “Urgent” flags when predicted stock < 0.

• Drill-through to SKU history to investigate anomalies.

  
  

Business Value: Improved procurement efficiency by identifying shortages early, reducing downtime and emergency orders.

4. Stock Overview Dashboard

This dashboard provided a financial perspective on total inventory value split into Finished Goods, Raw Materials, and WIP. It tracked month-wise valuation trends for working capital analysis.

Power BI Functionality Used:

• Cross-filtering by Stock Category, Plant, and Material Type.

• Drill-through from summary to SKU detail for finance validation.

• Export-ready tables for monthly reporting.

  
  

Business Value: Finance teams gained visibility into capital allocation and valuation trends, improving working capital efficiency.

Technical Architecture & Process

Data Flow:

ERP Exports → SQL Server Staging → Power BI Data Model → Interactive Dashboards

SQL Model:

Details of the SQL model would be included here.

DAX Snippet for Overdue Order Calculation:

DAX code snippet would be included here.

Conclusion: A Data-Driven Future

The Kingspan Manufacturing Dashboards established a single source of truth across orders, inventory, and financial stock valuation.

With Power BI’s real-time insights and SQL-based automation, Kingspan:

• Proactively managed open orders and reduced delivery delays.

• Balanced inventory across plants to align production and demand.

• Improved financial control through transparent stock valuation reporting.

  
  

The result is a data-driven supply chain that optimizes working capital, reduces costs, and strengthens delivery performance across Kingspan’s global operations.

In today's competitive landscape, leveraging data effectively is crucial. Kingspan's journey illustrates the transformative power of modern analytics in supply chain management. By adopting a comprehensive approach, they have set a benchmark for efficiency and responsiveness in the manufacturing sector.

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For more information on how to enhance your supply chain management, visit Kingspan's website.