Mars Sweetens Supply Chain Management with iComplai
Mars needed early warning on raw material risk across a large and varied supplier network. This is what they were looking for, what they put in place, and what they are doing with it next.
Confectionery, pet food and other food products, and animal care services. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, and entirely owned by the Mars family.
What was the problem?
In the food and feed industry, ensuring the quality and safety of raw materials is paramount. Our customer, Mars, faced the challenge of predicting emerging raw material risks continuously. Different factors like climate change, COVID, and political instability all brought new risks which required continuous monitoring of external events that could impact raw material safety. They needed a solution that could provide early warnings of relevant new risks.
This is where iComplai comes into play — iComplai is a cutting-edge platform capable of scrutinizing millions of data points to deliver daily insights on emerging raw material risks.
Why was it hard?
Mars, Incorporated is an American multinational manufacturer of confectionery, pet food, and other food products and a provider of animal care services. The company was ranked as the fourth largest privately held company in the United States by Forbes. Headquartered in McLean, Virginia, the company is entirely owned by the Mars family.
Our customer has a vast network of suppliers, with varying volumes and origins. The challenge was to monitor these suppliers effectively and get alerts if any issues were detected so that they could adjust their suppliers' HACCP and similar quality control ratings based on the risks associated with the raw materials.
“We were looking for a solution that could provide us with real-time updates on our raw material risks. We needed to be able to react quickly to any changes and ensure the safety and quality of our products.”
Aksana Kastsova, Supplier Quality Assurance and Digital Insights Lead at Mars
What did iComplai put in place?
iComplai provided an ideal solution for Mars' needs. With iComplai, they could monitor their raw material risk and get early warnings when new risks arose. The platform could determine the risks, both known and predicted, of raw materials within 30 seconds.
“The iComplai platform has been a game-changer for us. It's like having an extra set of eyes on our supply chain with specific focus on material risks and hazards. We can now monitor our suppliers even more effectively and make informed decisions based on the data.”
Aksana Kastsova, Supplier Quality Assurance and Digital Insights Lead at Mars
Where does it go from here?
Our customer plans to continue using iComplai to monitor their raw material risk and supplier quality. The iComplai data will be rolled out to a user base of 250+ quality assurance experts, in addition to R&D and Regulatory Affairs so they can save time and have better control of the supply chain.
“We see a lot of potential in the iComplai platform. We're looking forward to integrating more of our data and making better use of the machine learning algorithms and additional early warning messages provided by iComplai.”
Aksana Kastsova, Supplier Quality Assurance and Digital Insights Lead at Mars
The same question, asked of your own raw materials.
The work in this story is not a report anyone wrote by hand. It is the platform reading more than 150,000 sources against one company's own materials, origins and suppliers, every day. The useful version of it is the one pointed at your list, not at a commodity index.
See how supplier risk is scoredQuestions this story usually raises
How quickly does iComplai score a raw material?
The platform determines the risks of a raw material, both known and predicted, within 30 seconds. That is the figure Mars works with, and it is what makes the assessment usable inside a buying or approval conversation rather than after it.
What does an early warning actually contain?
A signal names the raw material, the hazard and the origin it is being seen against, and it carries the evidence it was drawn from. It is a prompt to ask a question of a supplier, not a finding about one, and it arrives while the question can still change a decision.
Does this replace supplier audits and HACCP?
No. It feeds them. Mars uses the risk picture to adjust supplier HACCP and similar quality control ratings, so the audit programme is pointed at the materials and origins where something has actually moved, rather than at a fixed annual rota.
How many people can use it inside one company?
At Mars the data is being rolled out to a user base of more than 250 quality assurance experts, alongside R&D and Regulatory Affairs. The signal is most useful when the people who buy, formulate and approve are reading the same one.
What does a company have to provide to start?
Its raw materials, their origins and its suppliers. The monitoring runs against that list rather than against a generic commodity set, which is what makes a signal relevant rather than merely true.
Run the same check on your own list
Send your highest-volume raw materials and their origins, and we will show you what we see on them now and what we expect over the next six months.
Talk to iComplaiWhere these details come from
[1] The quotations and the operational detail in this story — the supplier network, the rating workflow, the 30-second scoring and the planned rollout — were provided by Mars and are reproduced as given.
[2] Mars, Incorporated. Company overview. mars.com
[3] Forbes. America's Largest Private Companies. forbes.com