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...
Implementing S&OP is simple but not easy; balancing supply and demand in the short and medium term should not be too difficult, although practice often shows otherwise. The biggest challenge in most cases is to create a process that adds so much value for the business that lasting buy-in is created from all stakeholders. The next step in S&OP...
'Change is the law of life' “Change is the law of life...” said John F. Kennedy during one of his speeches in 1963. This famous quote is more relevant for organisations today than ever before. The world around them is evolving increasingly quickly and companies are continuously involved in change – or at least they should be. But that’s not easy –...
In the chemical industry, the average S&OP process has a relatively high degree of maturity compared with other sectors. Nevertheless, chemical companies still face certain challenges when progressing from S&OP to IBP. We distinguish between the two as follows: S&OP is the decision-making process for ensuring the feasibility of the commercial...
S&OP is often pictured as a largely standard process; textbook S&OP starts with agreeing an unconstrained demand plan that is handed over to supply planning who need to ensure product availability. In case of important bottlenecks, the S&OP meeting is the final escalation step in the process, where all remaining imbalances should be resolved. ...
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...
Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), advanced analytics, machine learning and blockchain are often mentioned as the leading trends driving competitive advantage for supply chains. These trends and developments will change the way we do our business and also how we will design our supply chains of the future. Question is, do...
According to Gartner, the adoption of supply chain software continues to accelerate. That has confirmed my gut feeling and spurred me to put some thoughts on paper. There is indeed a lot happening in the world of S&OP/IBP software; functionalities are rapidly improving and companies are afraid of getting left behind. So you decide you need to...
Many organizations have a basic S&OP process in place and now want to take the next step to integrated business planning (IBP) in order to maximize the benefits of the process. Supply Chain Media and Involvation have developed this roadmap showing typical obstacles on the path to IBP and how to overcome them. Download the Roadmap to Integrated...
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...