Why AB InBev’s Supply Chain Overhaul Is Focused on Touchless Planning
Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) has been on a supply chain transformation journey that spans more than five years. Elito Siqueira, its global SVP of supply chain planning, said during the recent Aim10x Digital 2025 virtual event that the ultimate goal has been to reduce complexity.
Following a series of M&As that integrated several global systems across Africa, Asia, and the Americas, AB InBev faced an ecosystem that was much larger and more complex than it used to be. It now includes more than 270 plants, breweries, and virtual operations; more than 600 distribution centers; and more than 500 brands.
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And so the company sought out solutions to simplify processes. It required thinking differently about how to connect day-to-day operations in terms of integration and orchestration, said Siqueira. It led to creating new benchmarks, improving not just technology but ensuring people and process were at the right levels.
“One of the pillars that was definitely important for us to make a change in was the planning side,” he said.
While AB InBev did bring in software from o9 Solutions — focusing on demand, supply network, and materials planning — it also put in a lot of effort to train its employees and reinforce the quality of execution so the company could extract results from the technology overhaul. Over the last five years, pilots have been implemented in about 10 countries the company operates in, representing close to 75% of its volume. The goal is to reach 85% by end of year, said Siqueira.
Reaping the Rewards
Benefits have included striking synergy between cost, cash, and service in supply chain operations — a difficult line to walk.
“It's always hard for you to really achieve all the three. You can sometimes improve service by increasing ventures. You can maximize cost, but then you jeopardize your service. And we have been able to really balance well the improvement in all the three at the same time”
For example, said Siqueira, service lab out of stocks have reduced by half in the last three, four years, and in inventory, the company has improved its forecast accuracy by 20%.
One key KPI in all of this is what the company calls “touchless” — or the quality of the plan. Today, within the company’s U.S. demand planning, about 85% of the output is touchless — which means that out of what the machine puts out, people only touch or change about 15% of it.
“I'm quite obsessed with that because, in the past, we invested a lot in technology, but we were not always successful in extracting all the benefits … So we started to make sure that the usage of those tools were really at the optimal level. Because if the plan is good enough when you talk about planning, it's more about the quality of the plan,” said Siqueira.
This has a trickle-down effect across all operations, making it easier for allocations, line planning, communications with suppliers, and so on. As a result, in the U.S., the company’s out-of-stock level is below 0.5% — an effort the company is trying to replicate in other countries it operates in.
Ongoing Digital Transformation Efforts
The company also has its sights set on overhauling IBP with GenAI-driven efficiencies. Implementation will be a tiered approach, starting with simple summaries and training teams. Then, it can be used to analyze data.
Right now, planner analysis has to understand why demand has changed, what’s happened in terms of allocation and deployment, and what types of costs were generated as a result of fluctuations. Generative AI, he hopes, will help explain changes across the supply chain.
Third, he said, would be using the tool to suggest improvements within planning. The goal is to pilot a solution within the year.
