Coperion: Intelligent spare parts planning for greater safety and availability

Coperion is a globally leading manufacturer of systems and equipment for the plastics, chemicals, and battery technology industries. Headquartered in Stuttgart and part of the Hillenbrand Group, the company serves demanding industries with highly complex machines and a correspondingly extensive spare parts portfolio.

After-sales revenue was high. Planning quality was not keeping pace.
Spare parts planning at Coperion was largely static: driven by experience-based rules, flat-rate safety stock buffers, and a constant fear of stockouts. The result was a classic inventory problem that repeats itself regularly in mechanical engineering and hits especially hard for high-runners and parts with volatile demand.

The specific symptoms:

• Overstocked warehouses with capital tied up in slow-moving inventory
• Recurring critical stockouts on high-demand parts
• Revenue losses from unfulfillable customer orders
• Planning decisions based on gut feeling rather than data
• No reliable system to forecast demand accurately under volatile conditions
• Growing competitive pressure from Asia in the spare parts business added further urgency

Together with Michael Mock, SCM Team Lead Material Planning at Coperion, PartsCloud did not start with a full rollout, but with a targeted Proof of Value: a limited set of particularly critical components was defined as the test field. The goal was clear: to prove that the AI-based forecasting and stockflow engine of PartsOS could detect and prevent impending stockouts early.

The results were convincing within just a few weeks: PartsOS delivered significantly more precise forecasts, automated procurement decisions, and reduced manual interventions to a minimum.

KPI Workshop: Making Success Measurable Before It Happens
In parallel with the technical rollout, PartsCloud conducted a KPI workshop with management and the six-person planning team. Success metrics were defined collaboratively, anchored in the business dashboard, and established as ongoing KPIs. This was not a side step it was a prerequisite for user acceptance and scalability.

Change Management as a Success Factor
The second critical success factor was the structured involvement of the planning team. A joint workshop demonstrated that data-driven decisions are more reliable over time than experience-based rules alone. The team built confidence in the system and gradually transitioned their daily work into the new, AI-powered process.

Today, the planning team operates fully digitally and makes procurement decisions based on solid data, not gut feeling.

Just three months after go-live, the investment in PartsOS had already paid off. Coperion achieved measurable improvements across all three original pain points simultaneously:

• Payback period: 3 months
• Parts availability: +over 15%
• Critical stockouts: Virtually fully eliminated
• Inventory levels: Significantly reduced
• Planning process: Fully digitized

Three months to ROI is the fastest payback in the entire PartsCloud customer portfolio, made possible by the targeted Proof-of-Value approach that first addressed the parts with the highest stockout risk.