In 2006, the company added a bolt-on solution from Demand Foresight: Software that essentially learns how demand ebbs and flows over time. The tool allows Imperial Sugar to see the impact of a wide range of factors on demand, react to changes quickly and track performance.

After the refinery catastrophe, Imperial Sugar needed immediate insight into how many customers it could serve with its available inventory. The software gave them that overview by product line, and its "available to promise" functionality allowed everyone from production to sales to see, in real time, what could be delivered.

Muller won't reveal how much he spent on Demand Foresight, saying only that it was a "drop in the bucket" compared to his last $5.7 million PeopleSoft upgrade and implementation. "It was our saving grace," he says. "It took our demand, our inventory and capacity, and the number of new orders coming in and tied it all together. We couldn't fulfill every order, but we were able to fill more orders than we ever would have had we not had that tool."

The Port Wentworth plant recommenced packaging operations last September. It now churns out 125 four-pound bags of sugar a minute. "When we knew the first truck was being loaded after year and a half," says Muller, who is now vice president of administration, "there was a real sense of pride in having been a part of the team that managed our way through tragedy."

in CIO's Applications Drilldown.