RELEX Solutions, a provider of unified supply chain and retail planning solutions, has announced its acquisition of Optimity, a provider of supply chain planning and optimisation.

The acquisition, announced on January 3, 2024, aims to enhance RELEX's manufacturing planning and optimisation capabilities, offering a synchronised platform for demand, supply, production, and distribution planning in the consumer goods sector, the company says.

Mikko Krkkinen, co-founder and group Chief Executive Officer at RELEX, said: "The consumer goods industry is incredibly dynamic and complex.

"Acquiring Optimity will seamlessly link downstream demand with upstream planning, enabling consumer goods companies to predict consumer demand more accurately, optimise production plans and schedules, adjust inventory levels, and respond quickly to market changes or unexpected disruptions," he said.

He further added, "This acquisition also further accelerates our vision towards an adaptive, autonomous and synchronised supply chain unifying demand and supply planning decisions in one platform to minimise all wasted cost and product."

Headquartered in Sweden, Optimity is a global company with offices worldwide. It offers a wide range of supply chain planning and optimization solutions specifically for manufacturers and distributors. The company enables its customers to make optimal supply chain decisions, offering services such as demand planning, production planning and scheduling, supply planning, distribution planning, and inventory optimisation. Optimity’s more than 80 customers across the food and beverage and complex manufacturing industries will augment RELEX's expertise across retail and consumer goods markets.

The acquisition comes as part of RELEX's strategy to extend and deepen its production planning and supply chain optimisation capabilities, specifically in the food & beverage and manufacturing sector. Some of the capabilities introduced or expanded through this acquisition include production planning, production scheduling, network balancing, distribution planning, and purchase planning, the company says.

Christer Liden, Chief Executive Officer at Optimity, also remarked: "Our depth in some of the most complex consumer goods industries like bakery, ready-made meals, protein production and industrial manufacturing complements the vast understanding of consumer demand that RELEX has, based on their impressive expertise managing more than $700 billion of demand in grocery alone.

"We are thrilled to join the RELEX team and further optimise the consumer goods value chain together," he said.

With this move, RELEX takes a decisive step forward in bolstering its optimisation capabilities for daily production planning and production scheduling, and provides a powerful boost to their offering to meet the needs of the dynamic consumer goods industry.