Case Study: Airgas achieves 21% reduction in days-on-hand and nearly 95% fill rates with Blue Yonder

Airgas leverages Blue Yonder solutions and services to better balance supply and demand and manage growth

Airgas, Inc., the largest U.S. distributor of industrial, medical and specialty gases and welding supplies, runs a nationwide network of roughly 1,100 locations, thousands of vehicles and millions of SKUs. Rapid, acquisition-driven growth (nearly 300% revenue increase) left the company with fragmented legacy demand systems across 12 regional operations and no enterprise-wide view of supply and demand, making inventory optimization and scalable demand management a critical challenge.

Airgas deployed JDA Demand and JDA Fulfillment with JDA Consulting in a phased rollout to centralize forecasting, run nightly fulfillment and use dynamic deployment and statistical safety-stock calculations. The integrated approach managed millions of forecast units and thousands of daily purchase orders while cutting days-on-hand inventory by 21%, raising fill rates from 89% to nearly 95%, improving purchasing productivity and limiting planner headcount growth despite rapid revenue expansion.

Airgas

Nate Miller

Director of Enterprise Systems