Home appliance manufacturer Bissell Homecare has been on a yearslong supply chain overhaul to improve forecast accuracy, accelerate decision-making and sharpen inventory management.
The company’s partnership with cloud platform o9 Solutions has been critical to the transformation, according to SVP of Supply Chain and Operations Lyndsi Lee. Bissell, best known for its vacuums, is now several years into its journey, and currently leverages several modules from o9 for a range of functions, including demand and supply chain planning and inventory optimization.
COVID-19 exposed shortcomings
Like many companies, Bissell faced demand volatility during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly as people spent more time in their homes during lockdowns, creating a desire for more cleaning efficacy, Lee said.
The shifts in demand exposed a lack of technological sophistication and automation in its operations, Lee said. At the time, the company’s operations were run primarily through Excel and “hallway conversations.”
“The decision making process was really inefficient, and so COVID really highlighted, I think, some of the challenges and lack of technology and automation that we had,” Lee said.
With an extensive network of global suppliers and distribution centers, the floor care and home cleaning products company sought out a technology solution that would enable complete end-to-end visibility across its supply chain, Lee said. Ultimately, Bissell wanted to enable rapid, data-driven decision making across its operations.
“And so we wanted to be able to look around the corner and kind of proactively anticipate what challenges the business might have if we were to have a 10% or 20% growth scenario, what would that mean from an inventory and a planning perspective?” she said.
A phased rollout picks up steam
Bissell — which is currently about three years into its technology implementation — rolled out the different o9 modules in phases, Lee said, starting with demand planning and then supply chain planning. Bissell later implemented a supplier collaboration module and an inventory optimization tool.
“We wanted to start with the foundation of making sure that we had a solid and confident forecast in place, because that kind of feeds the rest of the supply chain processes,” Lee said, noting that Bissell has now implemented o9 pretty broadly across its planning organization.
With this part of the integration, Bissell’s goal was to navigate different scenarios to understand the operational impacts and gain solid forecasts more quickly.
For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it would take Bissell two to three weeks to manually run various scenarios. By contrast, after President Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs in April 2025, it took 48 hours for the company to understand the potential impacts, including what would happen if they stopped production on certain products and when stock would eventually run out.
“A critical enabler to that is our ability to run different scenarios and think proactively instead of reactively,” Lee said. “So for us, it’s really about reducing decision latency, right? So how do we make data-driven decisions and how do we make decisions at scale versus having to run a bunch of numbers in Excel that take us two to three weeks.”
Better decisions lead to cleaner inventory
Bissell also has reaped several benefits from leveraging a centralized decision-making platform. For instance, greater forecast accuracy allows the company to reinvest some of its safety stock while also driving up service levels. The tech tools have also helped Bissell reduce unplanned costs, including for logistics.
“Having the right inventory in the right place at the right time, we don’t have to cross-regionally ship products as frequently [and] we don’t have to do unplanned transfers,” Lee said.
Lee added that Bissell has an ambition to reach “touchless orders,” meaning when planners can create a forecast that is fed directly to suppliers.
“Our suppliers can interact with that forecast and say, ‘Yes, we have the capacity, and we have all of the parts and raw materials to fulfill that,’” she said. “And then that flows all the way through the system without a plan or having to really interact within an in a really meaningful and heavy way.”
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