Category: S&OP

Are you avoiding these common data visualization pitfalls during your S&OP meetings?

A look at some of the S&OP implementation best practices for managing your data. Now I’m not going to say, “Ask not what your data can do for you, but ask what you can do for your data.” In the past, I was under the impression that going through a system implementation process of setting up product hierarchies would mark the end of the process. I must now say, there’s more to the story.  

A little over a year ago, I ventured into the unchartered territory of supply chain planning. It was an exciting challenge. I had experience as a marketer in the Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) space. And because ERP solutions often have some supply chain planning functionalities, I thought I could easily apply my knowledge from the ERP space to supply chain planning.

Almost three decades ago Sales and Operational Planning (S&OP) became the innovation in manufacturing and supply chain. When S&OP came about in 1987 as a concept, we did not yet have the internet much less the “internet of things.”

Sometimes when we make a mistake it's hard not to dwell over it and relive the incident over and over in our minds. Reflection on a past mistake and help us avoid or learn from this mistake in the future, but how do we not turn this reflection into an obsession?

During my apprenticeship, one of the critical lessons I learned to work successfully with managers and planners is consistently make clear which planning / scheduling problem is the current focus and how it relates to other planning and scheduling decisions. I have organized these decision points into a tier hierarchy for better understanding of what can make business planning successful.

Sales and Operations Planning is a continuous business process that enables firms from hospitals to chemicals to respond to emerging situations intelligently. Today we will discuss the relevance of buzz words such as Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Data Science, and Machine Learning, for S&OP.

Organizations, from health care facilities to manufacturing giants to small restaurants, can be viewed as an ongoing sequence of loosely coupled activities where current and future assets are matched with current and future demand across the supply chain or demand supply network. These planning and scheduling decisions occur across a complex playing field. Read to learn more about these planning activities.

I was lucky to attend the Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conference in Phoenix last May. 1 of the keynote speakers...

Last time in Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SiOP) - Part Four I talked about the Supply step of the cross-functional process...

Last time in Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SiOP) - Part Three I talked about the Demand step of the cross-functional process...

Last time in Sales, Inventory & Operations Planning (SiOP) - Part Two I talked about the Demand step of the cross-functional process...