The supply chains of a company as large as P&G are extremely complicated, featuring thousands of suppliers, manufacturing facilities, and markets Even the slightest of changes at any part of the supply chain has significant effects on all of the other participants. What's more, because P&G's supply chains are so extensive, the chance for any errors or inefficiencies to occur are greater than with er, more compact supply chains. Inventory optimization for a company as large as P&G is therefore critical to cutting costs and increasing revenues, P&G was already renowned for its supply chain management, successfully reducing its surplus inventory with sales and operations planning, better forecasting, just-in-time delivery strategies, and vendor-managed inventory activity. But multi-eche-lon inventory optimization has provided the Company with a new means to achieve even higher levels of efficiency.