STEMCELL Technologies Boosts Service Levels to 95% While Cutting Inventory 25% with Intuiflow

STEMCELL Technologies supplies innovative reagents, tools, and services to laboratories around the world—from cell culture media to lab automation and IT solutions. Their products support the scientific research that fuels the life sciences industry.

As the company expanded globally with new product lines and factories, maintaining speed and service became increasingly difficult.

By 2013, rapid double-digit growth had outpaced existing systems.

Forecasts introduced huge variability, and service levels lagged. Customers expected immediate turnaround on made-to-stock products—but thousands of SKUs, deep bills of materials, and shelf lives ranging from one day to ten years made that nearly impossible.

The Challenge: Rapid Growth Meets Complex Supply Chains

STEMCELL manages more than 1,400 semi-finished and 4,000+ finished products, each with its own lead times, shelf life, and specialized materials. Many components are single-source and subject to biological variability from batch to batch.

To keep up, executives needed a way to align production and inventory to real demand—without overstocking or compromising quality.

The Solution: Building a Demand Driven Operating Model with Intuiflow

STEMCELL became an early adopter of Demand Driven methods, recognizing their potential to stabilize variability and improve flow. After evaluating integration options, the team selected Intuiflow to connect directly with their ERP system.

In 2014, STEMCELL launched three installations of Intuiflow’s Materials Planning solution across North America, Europe, and Asia, using DDMRP to position inventory strategically and prioritize continuity of flow.

To ensure product freshness and control, Intuiflow was integrated with both quality assurance systems and Salesforce, updating more than 60,000 reference pairs every four hours to maintain near real-time visibility across global operations.

“DDMRP took a lot of the variability out of our operations.”

— Barry Katz, Sr. Director of Supply Chain Operations, STEMCELL

Within a year, service levels rose from 88.6% to 95%, while average inventories and days on hand declined.

Encouraged by the results, STEMCELL advanced to a full Demand Driven Operating Model (DDOM) in 2018. Using Intuiflow’s Scheduling & Execution module, they analyzed capacity constraints, visualized resource loads, and synchronized work orders according to true priorities.

Next, they implemented Intuiflow’s S&OP module to model resource shifts and investment scenarios, connecting sales, finance, and operations through shared, data-driven plans.

The Results: Service Up, Inventory Down

By moving to a Demand Driven Operating Model, STEMCELL turned siloed functions into synchronized processes. Daily 15-minute buffer meetings replaced reactive firefighting, allowing teams to focus on the few areas that determined flow and responsiveness.

Even through the pandemic, the company maintained 95% service levels, shortened fixed planning horizons by 11 days, and reduced on-hand inventory by 25% — all without increasing operating costs.

“We really like being able to focus on a few key areas of our supply chain that determine how adaptive and responsive we can be.”

— Juan Abbud, Senior Business Analyst, STEMCELL

With real-time visibility into every work order, managers can now drill down to bottlenecks, allocate labor faster, and hold teams accountable for continuous improvement.

Future-Proof Your Supply Chain with Intuiflow

STEMCELL’s transformation shows what Intuiflow was designed for—turning complex, high-variability operations into agile, synchronized systems that stay aligned with real demand.

Intuiflow is a single, unified platform that connects materials planning, scheduling, and execution in real time. Instead of chasing variability, planners gain live priorities, AI-optimized buffers, and one version of the truth across global teams.

Intuiflow: One Platform. Four Core Solutions.

• Materials Planning: Keep inventory aligned to true demand—prevent shortages and overstocks with AI-optimized buffers and automated replenishment.

• Scheduling & Execution: Turn production priorities into predictable performance by sequencing work to actual capacity and demand.

• Sales & Operations Planning: Link strategy to execution with real-time visibility across sales, finance, and operations.

• Demand Planning: Replace static forecasts with adaptive, data-driven plans that flex as the market shifts.

Intuiflow is Smarter by Design

Autopilot, Intuiflow’s built-in AI engine, continuously fine-tunes parameters across every module—removing manual effort while keeping plans responsive to change. Embedded Power BI dashboards provide instant insight, while secure ERP integrations ensure fast, seamless deployment.

STEMCELL’s story proves that even in the most complex, regulated environments, Intuiflow helps companies cut inventory, stabilize service, and make faster, data-driven decisions—all in weeks, not quarters.

See how Intuiflow can help you simplify planning, boost service, and stay ready for anything.

👉 Book a Demo today

Stemcell Technologies Interview With Barry Katz [French] 👇