Case Study: a global high-tech hardware leader achieves up to $300M in savings with C3 AI Demand Planning

Global High-Tech Hardware Leader reduces forecasting error by 100% with C3.ai

The customer, a global high-tech hardware leader, faced significant challenges in accurately forecasting demand for its made-to-order, high-performance computing products. Due to volatile demand and limited historical data for customized SKUs, its previous market-leading forecasting solution produced errors exceeding 200%. The company engaged C3.ai to deploy its C3 AI Demand Planning application to address these forecasting inaccuracies and optimize its supply chain.

C3.ai implemented its solution by first unifying over 20 million rows of data from multiple enterprise systems into a Supply Chain Digital Twin. The C3 AI team configured machine learning pipelines to build granular forecasts and applied sparse data management techniques for new and volatile products. This approach reduced forecast errors (WAPE) by 70-100%, enabled a potential 7% inventory reduction, and identified $300 million in company-wide savings potential for the customer. The solution also provided explainable AI forecasts, which increased trust and adoption among the client's demand planners.