Case Study: Alcoa achieves a 4x improvement in demand-planning efficiency with Workday Adaptive Planning

Alcoa increases global planning efficiency by 4x

Alcoa, the Pittsburgh‑headquartered producer of bauxite and aluminum-related materials with 14,000 employees and $13.1 billion in revenue, struggled with slow, linear global demand‑planning. Teams across six continents relied on manual spreadsheet handoffs, duplicated data entry, and lengthy IT processing, which delayed forecasts, obscured actuals, and limited visibility into working capital.

By deploying Workday Adaptive Planning, Alcoa centralized forecasting, enabled weekly updates, dashboards, and what‑if scenarios, and eliminated fragmented manual processes. The company halved forecast processing time, improved demand‑planning efficiency by 4x, delivered forecasts two days faster, saved teams about two days of manual entry each month, and gained tighter control over working capital.

Alcoa

Roberto Martin Garcia

Global Director of Supply Chain and Commercial Operations