From Plateau to Breakthrough: How PPF Unlocked Trapped Value in 6-Weeks with ketteQ
European pet food leader boosts utilization, reduces waste, and accelerates performance by layering adaptive AI on top of its existing planning system.
Overview
Partner in Pet Food (PPF) is one of Europe’s largest pet food manufacturers, operating 12 production facilities across 10 countries and supplying over 400 large retail chains, specialty pet stores, and veterinary clinics in 35 markets. As demand and product complexity increased, PPF relied on its Kinaxis planning platform to manage production across its network.
But like many global manufacturers, PPF eventually hit a wall. Despite years of tuning and consulting support, the system had delivered all the value it could. Capacity utilization remained stuck, planners were spending too much time on manual adjustments, and new efficiencies were increasingly difficult to capture. The system wasn’t broken; it was stuck at its maximum capacity.
PPF didn’t want to replace what was working. They tried to break through the performance plateau without disrupting their core foundation. That’s when they turned to ketteQ and the PolymatiQ™ agentic AI engine.
“We’d been trying to get better results from our planning solution for three years. ketteQ’s PolymatiQ™ gave us real-time intelligence, seamless integration, and the flexibility to scale with our growth.”
Challenge
Like many companies relying on legacy planning systems, PPF faced the hard truth:
Traditional planning platforms eventually stop improving.
PPF experienced:
- Stagnant capacity utilization, despite multiple optimization projects
- Growing complexity across products, markets, and plants
- Heavy manual rework, slowing planners, and limiting responsiveness
- A clear performance ceiling, even after years of investment
- No appetite for a risky rip-and-replace, given the strength of the existing platform
The next level of performance wouldn’t come from tuning more parameters; it required thinking differently and augmenting the system with modern intelligence.
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Solution
Instead of replacing Kinaxis, ketteQ deployed its PolymatiQ™ agentic AI solver engine directly on top of PPF’s existing planning environment, unlocking trapped value while preserving the investment already made.
With deep Kinaxis expertise from years at Barkawi Consulting and Genpact, the ketteQ team delivered:
- Seamless integration with PPF’s current planning workflows
- Probabilistic, multi-pass scenario solving to uncover more efficient production plans
- Real-time production intelligence to highlight constraints and opportunities earlier
- Automated planning-by-exception workflows, reducing rework and manual intervention
- Rapid deployment, with the first plant live in just 6weeks
The breakthrough didn’t require rebuilding the plane—just adding the radar.
Results
Within the first planning cycle at the initial plant, PPF broke through its long-standing plateau and achieved measurable gains:
- 13% increase in capacity utilization
New capacity was unlocked without significant process changes or capital investments. - $8 million in projected annual savings
Waste reduction and production alignment led to significant financial improvements. - Higher planner productivity
Manual planning steps and rework were dramatically reduced.
A proven model for scale
With results achieved in weeks, PPF began rolling out PolymatiQ™ across Europe.
“PPF proves that you don’t need to rip and replace your planning system to achieve world-class outcomes. When you layer PolymatiQ™ on top, trapped value becomes visible—and results come fast.” Mike Landry, CEO, ketteQ
Breaking the Plateau, Extending the ROI
Most legacy planning systems have already delivered all the value they can. The breakthrough comes from combining what you have with what’s next.
With PolymatiQ™, PPF elevated its existing system to a higher level of performance—unlocking utilization, reducing waste, improving responsiveness, and extending the ROI of its planning platform.
PPF isn’t just planning anymore.
They’re adapting, evolving, and outperforming.
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