01
The situation
After a new ERP went live, the picture of what stock was where, and when it would expire, was split across systems. Stock the business already owned was at risk of expiring before anyone could act on it.
Case study · Synlait
A daily inventory model that recovered millions in stock
A per-batch early warning on expiring stock, built after a new ERP split the stock picture.
6 monthsto recover millions of dollars of expiring stock
- Organisation
- Synlait Milk, an NZX-listed dairy nutrition manufacturer
- Role
- Senior Commercial Analyst, in a two-person team managing a $500M+ portfolio
- Years
- 2022 to 2023
- Worked with
- The inventory controller, his team and the planners
02
What was built
Although it sat outside his commercial role, James designed a daily inventory snapshot: for every batch, its expiry, its value at risk under three outcomes, its location down to the bin, and an action flag.
Daily snapshots fed a master history, so the team could see both the detail and the trend. He built it with the inventory controller, his team and the planners, so it fitted how they already worked.
03
The result
The action flags gave the business a warning before stock expired. Records were corrected at the source in the ERP, and millions of dollars of lost and expiring inventory were recovered over six months.
In the same role James was principal modeller for infant nutrition deals worth several hundred million dollars, telling the commercial team plainly what a contract could and could not bear.
This work was done by James Graham as an employee or contractor before Crucible was formed. It is described from public information, and it is not presented as Crucible client work.
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