Transforming Craftis Demand & Supply Planning with a Bespoke AI Cloud Solution

Background

Craftis is the UK’s leading supplier of kid's activities, serving restaurants and hotels in the hospitality sector as well as airlines, ferry’s and leisure venues, operating from Towcester, Northamptonshire. The company had a familiar problem in the SME world: growth had outpaced the systems underpinning its supply chain.

The team was managing demand and supply planning using a mix of basic excel spreadsheets, an ageing Access database, and manual workarounds.

Their disconnected tools were becoming increasingly unfit for purpose, particularly as the business grew in product range and operational complexity.

I first joined Craftis to support the supply chain function during a staff illness.. The CEO and I had previously worked alongside each other and we quickly found our rhythm again. 

Together, we explored ERP systems and off-the-shelf demand planning tools from a variety of well-known vendors to solve the system. 

At the heart of this project was a clear goal: bring together historic and future customer demand, stock and supply measures in an intuitive interface that supports improved supply for Craftis customers, reducing shortages and storage costs given the long lead times inherent with far east manufacture.

Nothing we saw met the company’s needs, being either too rigid, too complex, or simply not designed with their product and planning requirements in mind.

Having spent the last 20 years working to transform multinational supply chains, I wasn’t going to be talked into a bad fit solution by the software suppliers we saw.

Instead, Michael and I pivoted: if no system existed that truly fit, we’d build one.

Solution

That led to a brilliant collaboration with Lumina, a tech partner start-up with a fresh approach to supply chain system challenges and a friendly and reassuringly experienced team of experts in AI, to co-develop a system from the ground up. 

Craftis signed up to become a beta partner, co-creating a cloud-based, AI-driven demand and supply planning solution tailored precisely to Craftis’ needs. 

The build was quick, professional and proved to be incredible value for money.

Key features we delivered:

• Combined graphical + tabular replenishment planning views.

• Machine learning algorithm creating aggregated demand forecasts per SKU from invoiced sales at customer level.

• The ability to influence demand forecasts by customer.

• Replenishment purchase order auto creation (to vendor) with required quantity per line and price break auto selection. 

• AI chat function for answering any question about the historical or future state of the business at any level, as well as for setting reminders, creating business rules and heuristics. 

• Clear separation of bespoke vs generic product planning.

• Advance visibility for the design team, relieving a long-standing bottleneck.

• Proactive planning for Chinese New Year and other vendor-specific lead times.

• Vendor order deadline tracking & visibility.

• Automated PO tracking and status updates.

• Smarter safety stock and demand shaping tools.

What started as a stop-gap support role turned into a transformative project, unlocking better planning, reducing risk, and building a future-proof system aligned with how Craftis really works.

This wasn’t just software.

It was supply chain strategy brought to life in a way that off-the-shelf tools simply couldn’t deliver.