Although digital planning has been around for decades, it suddenly seems to be on everyone’s lips. With the pace of technological advancements continuing to accelerate, digital planning can offer huge benefits and will undoubtedly play a key role in strengthening your supply chain resilience. However, it is important to remember that technology...
It’s as if everyone’s talking about digital planning nowadays. That might seem pretty strange, because has there ever been such a thing as non-digital planning? Yes, once upon a time… decades ago, long before Excel’s predecessors became available. But since then, I’ve rarely come across any planners who prefer the proverbial back-of-a-cigarette-...
Digital planning, hype or trend? Is digital planning just another buzzword or is it truly a meaningful new concept? The traditional approach is to first design the planning processes and then look for the appropriate tooling. Nowadays, it’s the other way round; the technological advancements determine which processes and skills are required. In...
The coronavirus has turned the world upside down and will continue to have a major impact on people’s personal and working lives for the foreseeable future. Some are even claiming that coronavirus is a game changer in the business world, although some sectors will of course be more strongly affected than others. One thing is for sure: many supply...
Numerous articles have been published recently on the topics of no-touch planning and lights-out planning. The first thought that comes to my mind is whether planning requiring no intervention at all is indeed possible… and my second thought is whether that is desirable. Possible? Personally, I don’t think it’s possible to fully automate the...
The technology behind bitcoin is gradually finding its way into the supply chain domain; pilot applications of blockchain are hitting the headlines almost every week. For many of these pilot cases, however, it is still hard to see the added value. In my view, the added value of these pilots primarily lies in helping the industry to understand...
Last month, I wrote an article explaining why S&OP/IBP software is currently such a hot topic (click here for the article). Since then, we have had the pleasure of presenting the executive programme on ‘From S&OP to IBP’ at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM). The RSM session revolved around behavioural operations management. I’ve been...
Technology advances; Moore’s law It is amazing how fast things are developing and how quickly the number of options is expanding; Apple’s Siri, Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa, Alibaba’s Genie, etc. Who would have believed 10 years ago that a computer could talk to you and that your smartphone would order your groceries or your Latte...